With 75 years of experience, our focus is on helping the most vulnerable children overcome poverty and experience fullness of life. We help children of all backgrounds, even in the most dangerous places, inspired by our Christian faith.
Come join our 33,000+ staff working in nearly 100 countries and share the joy of transforming vulnerable children’s life stories!
Employee Contract Type:
Local – Fixed Term Employee (Fixed Term)
Job Description:
Job Purpose
Reporting to the Regional Technical Excellence Director at the Southern Africa Regional Office, the Regional Sponsorship Lead provides strategic direction and technical leadership to the region focused on the implementation of World Vision sponsorship priorities and deliverables. The Regional Sponsorship Lead is a critical role in leading, establishing and maintaining effective and efficient sponsorship management and quality assurance, including effective data management and use, and sufficient Field Office (FO) capacity for their implementation. The position provides leadership of all sponsorship business processes, operational support in sponsorship business processes and systems capability, support the delivery of sponsor engagement features, and risk management and mitigation. This position also ensures solid engagement with FOs and Global Centre technical teams to ensure provision of support to the FOs for stronger and excellent sponsorship management.
Major Responsibilities
Sponsorship Management and Quality Assurance
Sponsorship Operations
- Lead field offices’ Rich Media annual planning process in coordination with GC Sponsorship.
- Provide subject matter expertise and inputs to sponsorship elements of FO plans, annual operating/business plans that will ensure strong integration of sponsorship operations.
- Provide key inputs for the improvement of safeguarding, child engagement and participation integration in sponsorship processes.
- Provide technical guidance to national offices during the annual and ongoing data quality processes.
- Guide the roll out of the sponsorship quality framework in the national offices.
- Lead the roll out and continuous utilisation of child sponsorship capacity building framework
- Lead the regional sponsorship technical support network.
- Lead and contribute in the regional and partnership networks and workgroups developing their understanding, engagement and action on sponsorship.
- Generate, review, and ensure regional and field offices’ leadership visibility of regional level periodic status/progress reports on sponsorship and Registered Children well-being and participation.
Quality Assurance
- Lead the ongoing review of periodic sponsorship programming operations reports to identify performance, risks, opportunities and needs for support. Some of these reports are: GNOD, SOI and monthly exception reports.
- Establish regional quality assurance support mechanism for and oversee the fulfilment of the agreed RC portfolio by the national offices including supply of registered child data and quality rich media to Support Offices.
- Lead and support the timely submission of regional monthly and quarterly SOI reports.
- Ensure appropriate reports are received from relevant GC teams and preliminary consolidation is done for analysis and finalization.
- Manage the gathering and the preliminary progress reports for major regional sponsorship projects and provide support to national offices in their implementation where necessary e.g. Managing Sponsorship for Excellence (MS4E), Sponsorship Basic Training (SBT) roll-out, adjustment to Child Monitoring Standard implementation, as well as other implementation e.g. Horizon Hope, implementation of modified Partnership Sponsorship Standards.
- Lead planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of regional sponsorship capacity building initiatives.
- Lead and support FOs to implement functional and management actions related to sponsorship reports and analytics. Monitor and report on progress against corrective and management actions.
- Lead identifications and reviews of business process in FO, assist where specific challenges have been identified with respect to the SOI and/or Sponsorship standards.
Sponsorship Initiative
- Strategically plan for capacity building of Sponsorship 3.0 and sponsorship basics including Walking with Volunteers, SBT4 DP, digital literacy for FOs.
- Map FOs capacities and identify challenges to address with a focus on digital literacy/champions.
- Align, be strategic and involved in communication on Sponsorship Initiative, especially FOs in Wave 1, 2 and 3
- Ensure “contextualization” and continue to push for field offices to consider, for example, age, disability, region/country, capacity.
- Participate in development and contextualization of Quality Assurance Framework simplification of process that supports FOs proactively.
- Support FOs in child-led processes (simple and practical) working with adolescents more practically.
- Support fragility platform to have ongoing view and updates on child sponsorship in fragility.
- Lead and support implementation of Relational Spaces for Children with FOs in collaboration with the GC Sponsorship Operations and Engagement team
- Support business implementation and change management of Sponsorship Initiative efforts with necessary business process changes and data quality assurance processes
- Lead scale-out of the sponsorship field operating model as a multi-year change process strengthening integration of sponsorship in frontline staff and volunteers’ roles
- Provide support to the development of quality assurance frameworks and mechanisms to ensure that the change processes including data have quality and are aligned with Regional and global principles and standards.
Sponsorship Business Systems Capability
Business Systems and Operational Capacity Building
- Lead the implementation of Field Office capacity building effort focusing on operational aspects and business systems support partnering with RO IT and in coordination with GC Sponsorship and WV Global Technology and Digital Solutions (GTD), specifically on:
- Sponsorship Operations indicators [SOI] (systems, database, reporting)
- Digital assets (photos, videos, correspondence, etc.) and sponsor features
- Horizon HOPE
- Horizon desktop and mobile applications.
- Provide ongoing review of FO operations for identification of support needs and Lead provision of the needed support with RO IT and GC teams (Sponsorship, WVGTD, others).
- Lead consistent review of the various sponsorship systems databases, users’ understanding, databases usage and performance, and Lead with the Regional IT on urgent action items, risks, and any issue requiring escalation.
- Assist in the development, testing and application of capacity building and operational resources relevant to all sponsorship business systems in coordination with global sponsorship teams.
- Conduct Field Office sponsorship capacity review and develop capacity building plans in consultation with the National Office Sponsorship Managers/Directors.
Business Systems and Operational Support
- Facilitate and adequately support the enhanced utilisation of Horizon HOPE in alignment with global and regional sponsorship strategic objectives and priorities.
- Lead with RO IT and, if necessary, WVGTD-SSS technical support group (Helpdesk) in resolving issues raised by Field Offices and/or Area Programmes’ sponsorship business systems operations.
- Facilitates the implementation of new business systems initiatives and digital transformations through capacity building of Field Office staff in partnership with RO IT.
- Review Field Offices’ inputs to Service Operations Indicators (SOI) databases for timeliness, completeness and accuracy, as well as operational trends indicating performance, risks, opportunities and needs for support.
- Design mechanism to improve FO’s effective use of sponsorship business systems to support strong performance across Field Offices.
Supporter Engagement and Sponsor Features
- Lead the engagement across FOs and relevant GC teams to ensure FO’ teams understanding of requirements and business processes/systems, as well as utilisation and access to business support mechanism to deliver supporter engagement deliverables.
- Lead support including capacity building events for National Offices in the region in regard to delivery of supporter engagement deliverables in timely manner in collaboration with GC and FO teams.
- Lead supporter engagement targeting Support Offices and National Offices.
- Support FOs to conduct transformative child engagement.
- Support planning and quality assurance process for rich media working in coordination with GC team.
- Monitor the monthly submission of the supporter engagement production against the annual plan.
- Collaborate with Global Centre to raise the voice of the field teams and influence global direction.
- Support documentation and sharing of lessons learnt and best practices.
- Lead National Offices’ timely and quality inputs to designs of sponsor features (APR, Christmas/Greeting Cards and Child Engagement Worksheets).
- Lead Application Learning events with National Offices prior to roll-out of major sponsor features process.
- Support National Offices in the supporter engagement test and pilots.
Global Sponsorship Initiative/s
- Work with RO Leadership to enable Southern Africa region to align the regional sponsorship positioning and work to the global strategy, direction, approach, and implementation plan.
- Lead the regional-level management and collaboration of sponsorship initiative/s in the region in close collaboration and partnership with other technical sectors to ensure integration of operations and implementation for reaching the targeted results.
- Strategically plan for integrated capacity building of key FO capacities and capabilities to support the implementation of global initiatives, including Transformative Child Engagement (including Relational Space for Children)
- Map FOs capacities and identify challenges to address with a focus on digital literacy/champions.
- Align, be strategic and involved in communication on New Sponsorship Initiative.
- Ensure “contextualization” and continue to push for field offices to consider, for example, age, disability, region/country, capacity.
- Participate in development and contextualization of Quality Assurance Framework simplification of process that supports FOs proactively.
- Support FOs in child-led processes (simple and practical) working with adolescents more practically.
- Support business implementation and change management of Sponsorship Initiative efforts with necessary business process changes and data quality assurance processes
- Support scale-out of the sponsorship field operating model as a multi-year change process strengthening integration of sponsorship in frontline staff and volunteers’ roles
- Provide support to the development of quality assurance frameworks and mechanisms to ensure that the change processes including data have quality and are aligned with Regional and global principles and standards
Data Analytics and Operational Integration
Data analytics:
- Lead regional-level sponsorship data analyses effort to inform strategic coordination, ongoing business process improvement, and capacity building efforts across offices in the region.
- Lead and provide RO and FO with regional strategic sponsorship analytical information
- Develop reports to influence RO and FO leadership decision making and strategic choices regarding sponsorship operations.
Strategic engagement for stronger programmatic and operational integration:
- Connect, collaborate, and establish strategic partnerships with regional technical teams e.g. MEAL, safeguarding, child protection, education, health, gender equity and social inclusion, livelihoods, and environmental sustainability/climate action, etc. that enables stronger programmatic and operational integration.
Risk Management and Mitigation
- Develop and maintain list of most common sponsorship risks with suggested mitigation strategies
- Participate in pre-audit meetings to support auditors, as needed.
- Support the monitoring of Field Office International audits including reports, management action plans and status updates working closely with national offices.
- Lead and provide structured and ongoing technical follow-up support to the national offices with poor sponsorship performance.
- Provides technical support for monitoring and addressing on-going risk management processes assuring accountability, transparency and integrity to children, programme communities and sponsors.
- Lead and provide structured and ongoing technical follow-up support to the national offices with poor sponsorship performance.
- Work with FO Sponsorship Leads and NO sponsorship staff to support AP and ensure timely review and provision of sponsorship analytics and RC data on key risk factors, and support FO to take appropriate actions.
KNOWLEDGE/QUALIFICATIONS FOR THE ROLE
Required Professional Experience
Leadership: At least 5 years’ experience in development work, out of which at least two years in leading a team at country or regional level.
World Vision Child Sponsorship Model
- In depth understanding and experience in Child Sponsorship and its contribution to children
- At least 2 years’ experience of supervising/managing sponsorship at country or cluster level.
- Demonstrated competencies in sponsorship management, especially on sponsorship business processes and systems.
Development work
- Strategic and in-depth understanding and experience in development program approach
- Field Office work experience in Child Sponsorship and/ or development projects.
Demonstrated community and staff facilitation skills, facilitation of training programmes, and partnering.
Required Education, training, license, registration, and certification
- University degree in management or a social science field or other relevant area
Preferred Knowledge and Qualifications
- Fluency in spoken and written English, Fluency in spoken and written French and/or Portuguese is an advantage
- In-depth knowledge of sponsorship policies, framework, business systems and processes.
- Knowledge of various technical sectors of development particularly DME, safeguarding/child protection, education, primary health care, micro enterprises development, etc.
- Knowledge of community development, local partnering.
Travel and/or Work Environment Requirement
- The position requires ability and willingness to travel domestically and internationally up to 40% of the time.
Application deadline: 8th April 2026
Applicant Types Accepted:
Local Applicants Only