Partnerships Officer

Batch Recruitment (2 positions): Partnerships Officer, NOB, FT, #138553 Belize, #138573 Guyana, Multi-Country Office for the Caribbean

Contract type: Fixed Term Appointment Duty Station: Belize Level: NO-2 Location: Belize, Guyana Categories: Partnerships

UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfill their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.

At UNICEF, we are committed, passionate, and proud of what we do for as long as we are needed. Promoting the rights of every child is not just a job – it is a calling.

UNICEF is a place where careers are built: we offer our staff diverse opportunities for professional and personal development that will help them reinforce a sense of purpose while serving children and communities across the world. We welcome everyone who wants to belong and grow in a diverse and passionate culture, coupled with an attractive compensation and benefits package.

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For every child, the right to results

UNICEF’s Caribbean Mult-Country Office (MCO) serves twelve English- and Dutch-speaking Caribbean countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. As part of UNICEF's Future Focus Initiative, the Caribbean MCO brings together policy influence, technical expertise and strategic partnerships to advance results for children across the region through one integrated programme, one management structure and a shared pool of resources. The Multi-Country Programme 2027-2031 focuses on three shared outcomes: equitable access to primary health care, learning and skills; protection of children from all forms of violence; and child poverty reduction and resilience strengthening.

Children across the Caribbean face interconnected challenges including learning losses, mental health concerns, violence, child poverty and increasing exposure to climate-related disasters. Despite many countries being classified as upper-middle or high income, significant inequalities persist, particularly for vulnerable children, adolescents, indigenous communities and those living in remote areas. Small island developing states also face fiscal constraints and heightened vulnerability to economic and climate shocks, requiring stronger regional cooperation and system-based solutions.

The Caribbean MCO’s management strategy is governed by four principles that together translate the new business model into concrete ways of working:

• Impact-driven: technical expertise is organized in shared multi-country working groups rather than replicated in each country, with enabling functions aligned around UNICEF’s strongest comparative advantages.
• Effective and agile: parallel country ecosystems are replaced by harmonized systems and flexible cross-country staffing, keeping management lean and decisions close to implementation.
• Grounded: regional scale is balanced with national depth through country-specific workplans, Heads of Office in each duty station, and matrix management that anchors authority and accountability at country level.
• People-centered: structural and managerial choices are guided by staff wellbeing, transparency and inclusion, with clear role definitions, meaningful consultation, and continuous investment in learning and development.

The operational expression of this model is the working group model. Rather than replicating similar roles across four separate country offices, technical and operational expertise is organized into 16 thematic and functional working groups, each distributed across different duty stations and each serving the full 12-country MCO — not just its host location. Roles are designed around three organizing principles: shared regional service, meaning every specialist contributes to the wider MCO; complementary expertise, meaning team capabilities reinforce each other rather than repeating the same profile in multiple places; and agile presence, meaning the workforce can be rapidly deployed across countries through travel, surge support or remote modalities in line with evolving needs and priorities. This working group model is the foundation of a fundamentally new way of working for UNICEF in the Caribbean: depth replaces duplication, and shared capacity replaces fragmented country-by-country coverage.

Under the overall leadership of the Area Representative with a dotted- line reporting relationship to the Deputy Representative, programmatic Coordination, three strategic shift working groups – Communication & Advocacy, Partnerships, and Knowledge Management, Data Analytics & Evaluation – provide the enabling capacities required to deliver a more influential, partnership driven and evidence rich multi country programme. Together, they position the MCO to shape public debates, build and leverage high value partnerships, and systematically use data, evidence and learning to drive results for children across the 12 countries.

The Partnerships working group drives the MCO’s partnership and resource-leveraging agenda, supporting the strategic shift towards positioning UNICEF as a partnership powerhouse in the Caribbean, with a primary strategic focus in on public sector engagement and International Financial Institutions, including the IDB, CAF, the Caribbean Development Bank, and the European Investment Bank. It develops and manages relationships with governments, multilateral banks, regional organizations, private-sector and actors, including within the philanthropic ecosystem, aligning financing, influence and capabilities around the three child-rights priorities and helping to unlock new, diversified resources for the multi-country programme.

The team is led by a Partnerships Specialist (Team Lead), P3, in Barbados, reflecting Barbados’ role as a regional diplomatic, financial and corporate hub. The team includes a Partnerships Officer, NOB, in Guyana, a Partnerships Officer, NOB in Belize, Partnership Specialist, NOC, in Jamaica, a Senior Partnerships Associate, G7, in Jamaica, and two NOC Communications & Partnerships Specialists with dual reporting lines in Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname. This mix combines upstream partnership brokering from Barbados with embedded capacity in key programme countries, allowing the MCO to cultivate national and regional alliances, engage public and private partners close to their operations, and maintain coherent standards, pipelines and stewardship across the 12-country portfolio.

How can you make a difference?

Under the general guidance and supervision of the Partnerships Specialist (Team Lead), the Partnerships Officer purpose is to support the Team Lead and partnerships working group in deepening collaboration with key stakeholders and helping to provide an interface for environmental scanning, knowledge exchange, resource mobilization, and policy influence within the scope of assignment. The key result is to ensure greater visibility for the Caribbean Multi Country Office and influence in support of its mission.

This role contributes to the Partnerships Strategic Shift, bringing specialized skills in private sector outreach, partnership scoping, and stakeholder engagement. The positions are based in Guyana and Belize, providing dedicate partnership capacity in strategically important locations across the MCO. Together, they strengthen engagement with public and private sector stakeholders and contribute to UNICEF’s partnership objectives, resource mobilization efforts, and programe results for chidlren across the Caribbean.

The incumbents contributes to identifying businesses, organizations and individuals who can support programmes for children, and to keeping the partnership pipeline up to date. The Partnerships Officer assists in implementing financial and non-financial partnership activities, including preparing partner research, background materials, draft proposals, reports and communication with partners such as businesses, foundations, philanthropists, and member and faith-based organizations.

This position belongs to the Public & Private Partnerships working group. If you would like to know more about this position, please review the complete Job Description here: NOB Partnerships Officer Belize and Guyana.pdf

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