Entrepreneurship in the territories: is it the right time?
About Us
Established in France in 2007, Libraries Without Borders / Bibliothèques Sans Frontières (LWB/BSF) is a global NGO that supports knowledge development and culture, especially in libraries in developing countries. We think that easy access to information and culture sharing is vital for both human growth and human rights. We work in over 20 countries, helping local communities build and improve libraries to support education, cultural access, and preservation. BSF develops creative programs including digital and physical libraries for better access to education and information.
BSF’s expertise is based on three pillars:
· Selecting educational and playful content adapted to the final beneficiaries (profile, language(s) spoken, literacy level, objectives), whether physical and/or digital. To date, the BSF database contains over 50,000 digital contents in more than 36 different languages.
· Disseminating this content using innovative offline digital tools, enabling users to access this content from their smartphone, tablet, computer, or even e-reader:
o The Ideas Box: a multimedia library in kit form, that can be deployed over 100 m2 in less than 20 minutes, containing both paper and digital documentary resources, an offline internet server along with computers and tablets, board games, films… This genuine toolbox can be used to set up educational and school activities, train-the-trainer courses, as well as human development activities such as theater workshops and games.
o The Ideas Cube: an autonomous and ultra-portable server that works without an Internet connection to provide access to information in the most remote locations. The Ideas Cube creates a Wi-Fi hotspot to which users can connect using a smartphone, tablet or computer to access thousands of educational, cultural or training resources.
o The Kajou Cards:
· Training local partners and future users of the devices in the use of these tools but above all in cultural mediation around the selected content to facilitate the appropriation of the project and its impact.
Presence in the Middle East
BSF is active in the Middle East since 2015 and currently implements various educational projects in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. Operations are conducted under the regional office in Amman. Thanks to the support of the French Agency for Development, BSF is launching the second phase of its project called “Ideas Box Initiative”, which seeks to enhance the autonomy and resilience of vulnerable communities by improving their access to information, education and culture in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.
The project aims to designs and deploy Innovative and educational tools to support implementing partners in designing and implementing activities on non-formal education, psychosocial support, access to employment, social cohesion, gender and awareness-raising on disability.
By joining us, you’ll be part of a vibrant, growing organization that leads meaningful projects with social impact. We value our employees’ career growth through training and teamwork in a collaborative work environment.
Position description
BSF is recruiting a Regional Technical Advisor who will provide technical assistance to support implementation of BSF projects in the Middle-East region (Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine). This person will ensure BSF programs are of high quality and that the educational tools and methods designed for each project are matching the needs of the people and partners we’re aiming to help.
This includes:
- Content strategy and curation support
- Training design and support on BSF tools and content : design the training curricula for the use of BSF tools and content, identification of capacity-building for implementing partners, implementation of training sessions
- Methodological framework for facilitation of activities: design of activity curriculum, creation of methodological framework to support the implementing partners on facilitation techniques, etc.
- Management of IT & tools
Tasks and responsibilities
The Regional Technical Advisor will work in close coordination with the whole Project team in the Regional Office, as well as with the Education, Research and Impact Department, at BSF HQ in Paris.
The Content, Training, and Facilitation Technical Advisor is responsible for the following key tasks:
1. Content Strategy & Curation Support:
- Participate in content needs assessments for new and ongoing projects
- Design and update the content strategy of each project, based on needs assessments.
- Lead the BSF team in the curation, creation, and documentation of physical and digital content adapted to each content strategy, with a focus on Education, Digital literacy, Social cohesion, Protection of vulnerable communities, and Access to employment.
- Identify and work with translators and local content actors, at the regional level, to design suitable and relevant content to enrich the BSF database of content and activities.
- Identify relevant stakeholders in the Middle-East that will facilitate the identification and production of quality educational and pedagogical content, facilitate partnerships and cooperation agreements.
- Collect feedback from the users and partners to adjust the bank of content in order to build and update a broad library of appropriate locally sourced resources.
- Provide technical advice to the design and development of new projects.
2. Training Design and Support on BSF tools and content:
- Design and update the training curricula regarding the use and management of the tools (Ideas Box, Ideas Cubes, Kajou cards) and its content, facilitation and programming, user involvement, in line with existing general guidelines and materials.
- Design and implement methodologies and tools to assess the capacity and needs of implementing partners regarding the use of BSF tools and content.
- Implement and facilitate training sessions on the Ideas Box and Ideas Cube for the implementing partners,
- Implement and facilitate training and capacity-building sessions for BSF staff on the use of BSF tools and content.
- Conduct regular field visits to follow-up BSF partner’s activity implementation and to inform BSF activity and training support.
- Draft training and evaluation reports.
3. Methodological Framework for facilitation of activities :
- Design, with the program team and implementing partners, the activity curriculum for each project.
- Identify, with the program team and implementing partners, the needs for capacity-building for implementing partners on facilitation techniques.
- Design and follow the implementation of the methodological framework to provides technical guidance and capacity-building to implementing partners regarding the facilitation of activities, on a day-to-day basis, as needed.
- Implement and facilitate training and capacity-building sessions for BSF staff on facilitations techniques and methodologies.
- Ensure the proper deployment of methodologies on facilitation and technology (activity guides, methodological guides, etc.) and document good practices.
4. Management of IT & Tools:
- Coordinates the integration and update of digital content onto servers and other IT equipment (curated software, applications, etc.),
- Provides feedback and reports to the IT department at BSF HQ.
