Senior Technical Advisor - Output Lead, Institutionalisation VPPIC Programme

BACKGROUND

The position is embedded within the Violence Prevention for Peaceful and Inclusive Communities (VPPIC) Programme, a German technical cooperation initiative emphasizing on early intervention, particularly in early childhood development (ECD) and caregiving environments within the violence prevention sector. The programme seeks to foster a multi-stakeholder and systemic approach to enhance the structural conditions necessary for evidence-informed, gender-relevant early violence prevention interventions across South Africa.

Commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) collaborates with the Department of Basic Education and further South African partners to implement the programme.

The VPPIC works closely with the DBE, which is responsible for providing holistic support to ECD and school-based contexts, setting standards, and fostering partnerships with civil society and the private sector. Additional partners include the Department of Social Development, the Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, local government, and various multi-stakeholder and research networks active in violence prevention.

The programme focuses on early prevention to break intergenerational cycles of violence, particularly in caregiving environments for children, ECD, and school contexts, while exploring the intersections between violence against women and children. The gender-responsive early childhood crime and violence prevention objective will be achieved through three main outputs:

1) Localised implementation: aimed at the exemplary development of evidence-informed models to improve early prevention in care services for children aged 0 and 12 (target group) and their caregivers (parents, relatives, educators, social workers etc.) through a comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable manner at the local level of municipalities or neighbourhoods,

2) Multi-stakeholder collaboration: to improve coordination between different ministries and civil society networks for gender-responsive, early prevention of violence, incorporating learnings from localised implementation at Output 1

3) Institutional Capacity Building: to strengthen the institutional capacities of state and civil society actors with responsibility for the early prevention of violence.