Community Engagement and Partnership Lead

International Planned Parenthood Federation

Length of contract
3 year

About the Organization

International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) is a global sexual and reproductive health service provider and one of the leading advocates for universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for all. We are a worldwide movement of 149 national organizations working with and for communities and individuals, and together, have delivered more than 1 billion cumulative services over the last 6 years.  

We are now looking for people to join us and make our Come Together–Strategy 2028 a reality. Revolutionizing IPPF, placing it in a stronger position to support SRHR for those who are left out, locked out, or left behind. Come Together commits IPPF to shaping laws, policies, and norms through feminist action and international solidarity, and to strengthen the federation, adding new drive for real and lasting impact. 

Action is urgent. We have delivered. We have stood for justice and equality. We commit to more daring and feminist action that secures choices about our bodies, sexual lives, and well-being. Everyone should enjoy a pleasure-filled and healthy sex life and a life free from violence, shame, or criminalization. We know love is love. And we come together in support of women, youth, and people who are marginalized and excluded. Through the care we deliver, our actions, and the solidarity we foster.   

About the role

International Planned Parenthood Federation is looking for a Community Engagement & Partnership Lead. This role is about bringing in, through partnerships, those who have been historically excluded from our services, our offices, and our societies because of their ethnicity, disability status, drug use, sex work, HIV status, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression.  This role is for a person who has the experience and the credibility coming from having organized communities from within at national and regional levels, and is now interested in building strategic partnerships between community-led and SRHRJ organizations. For the role period 2026 - 2028, the priority areas are LGBTQI+ and sex worker communities.  There is full support within the most senior levels of IPPF to support this role, the disruption it brings, and the possibilities.

• The essence of this role is to bring the strategic thinking of regional community networks inside the IPPF Secretariat/Federation, establish spaces that will allow marginalized communities to step inside and challenge the status quo.
• This is a role for someone who brings their own lived experience and experience of engagement with regional networks, who prioritizes collaboration and connection. This work will go beyond the Federation to amplify messages, build alliances and consortia, and re-grant to movements and initiatives that matter.
• The role invokes courage, ambition, and aspiration for our Member Associations (MAs) and regional colleagues to create partnerships with regional community networks that collectively ensure IPPF, its services, and activism become more accessible to those traditionally excluded and marginalized.
• The role will be to work with Member Associations (MAs) and outside the Federation to connect, uncover, and create partnerships that will make a positive difference to the progress of our work.

Responsibilities

• To establish purpose-driven partnerships with community networks, ensuring they are led by people who have historically been marginalized from the SRHR sector, or who could amplify their work through the IPPF platform at the regional level. Partnerships that go beyond speaking together at regional events to shaping our profile and our work with the MAs and, through the m with the local excluded community organizations themselves.
• Drive the engagement of strategic community partnerships and relationships with IPPF, ensuring those we serve have space and the opportunity to challenge and challenge how we think, speak, and act to more fully deliver on our promise.
• Forecast and horizon-scan for trends and growing injustices, identify those groups at the heart of new SRHRJ-related struggles, and reach out to connect with them/influence IPPF to connect with them.
• Connect, identify, map, and link activists through relationship building, influencing, and outreach – ensure IPPF can be the broadest tent possible.
• Keep abreast of overall political trends in the region (sub-regions) and beyond, anticipating the opportunities or risks for key groups fighting for their rights, and how that should influence IPPF priorities for engagement and the type of engagement.
• Gather and share intelligence to map the opposition that these partners have to deal with, understanding how it shows itself both in their direct context and how it joins up in macro-opposition strategies, so we deepen our understanding of the landscape in which we are working to inform decisions and priorities for action.
• To build relationships, profile, and presence for IPPF in new fields, topics, and new ways.

Skills, Competencies, Experience & Attributes

Skills & Expertise:

• Lived experience within a stigmatized population is an asset. 
• Experience in community organizing at grassroots, national and regional levels, particularly of communities excluded/underserved by sexual and reproductive health services.
• Seen as a leader in challenging the status quo, bringing new messages and disruptive thinking to our community.
• Excellent analytical skills.
• A proven ability to build consensus.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills- fluency in English. Other languages, Russian, French Spanish, are an asset. 
• A political ‘nose’ fights for ideals but understands the political economy of a given context and strategizes accordingly.
• Ability to build momentum, rally partners around the same concern. 
• Bring issues up and across the Federation.
• Build authentic relationships and can relate to people from different cultures and backgrounds in a positive, engaging and thoughtful way
• Inclusive, curious and open to others’ ideas as well as coming up with and articulating their own ideas.
• Sound judgement, particularly in constrained and pressured situations and environments.
• Demonstrated ability to think and operate strategically and transform strategies into results.
• Willingness to travel nationally and internationally, as required. 

Your Ethos:

• Demonstrate an understanding of and commitment to safeguarding in a local and international context.
• Demonstrates ability and willingness to work in a diverse, multicultural, multilingual and intergenerational environment that is anti-racist and respectful of others.
• An intersectional feminist passionate about sexual reproductive health care rights and justice, including safe abortion.
• Supportive of people’s rights regardless of sexuality or gender identity expression, and supportive of workers’ rights and access to health care in sex work.

Working locations

• Brussels, Belgium

How to apply

• Interested candidates are requested to send their application letter, explaining how they meet the profile requirements, with a detailed CV and completed Safer Recruitment Form to [email protected] by Sunday, 04th January 2025

Policies

IPPF European Network envisions a world where every individual is healthy; where sex and sexuality are recognized as fundamental and precious parts of human life; where sexual and reproductive choices are respected; and where diversity is valued and celebrated.

IPPF is committed to the safety and protection of children, young people and vulnerable adults, and this role may involve contact with these groups. Our recruitment and selection procedures reflect our commitment to the safety and protection of children, young people, and vulnerable adults in our programs.

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