Student and Family Advocate

**JOB POSTING**

**STUDENT AND FAMILY ADVOCATE (SFA) COORDINATOR (Full-time)**

Background: Early Childhood Development Initiative (ECDI), is a Toronto based non-profit established to promote early childhood care and education (ECCE) for African children aged 0 - 12 years.

Under the Ontario Government funded Student and Family Advocates (SFA) Program, ECDI will provide advocacy supports/services, capacity building, education systems navigation, and other services to newcomer Black African children and their families, in collaboration with schools, school boards and community groups.

ECDI has created a fulltime SFA Coordinator position for the project.

**JOB DESCRIPTION**

Reporting to the Program Manager, the SFA Coordinator will be responsible for managing all aspects of the project. This includes design and distribution of outreach materials, family recruitment, and delivery of all program components to meet the following core functions:
**Advocacy on Behalf of Students and Families**
- Develop and conduct community consultation activities with children and their families to identify specific needs and challenges to be addressed.
- Develop an action plan, in partnership with families to address the identified challenges with the relevant school and/or board.
- Initiate communication and attend meetings with school boards, teachers, guidance counsellors, and/or administrators (education team) to facilitate discussion of student progress or issues of concern raised by students and their families.
- Develop and implement strategies to support positive school-family communication.
- Develop and facilitate cultural safety workshops for education teams, in partnership with families.
- Carry out other activities to fulfil core function 1.

**Student and Family Empowerment**
- Collaborate with children and families to support the development of short and long term education goals.
- Coordinate and facilitate training opportunities to strengthen children and family’s capacity to successfully navigate the education system and processes.
- Build and strengthen strategic partnerships to connect children and families with community resources, supportive programs and networks to increase education outcomes.
- Establish family network groups to facilitate rapid response to situations, information sharing and intragroup supports.
- Collaborate and support family/community developed initiatives to enhance home-school communication.
- Develop and implement community based family-child programs.
- Carry out other activities to fulfil core function 2.

**Community Collaboration and Systems Advocacy**
- Plan, coordinate and conduct outreach activities to increase awareness and recruit students and families.
- Organize community collaboration sessions with local schools/school boards to help build awareness of and address barriers identified by participating students, their families and communities.
- Provide leadership, advice, consultation and support to schools/school boards on anti-Black racism, systemic barriers and collaborate in the development of strategies to foster positive change for West African students and their families in the education system.
- Collaborate with community groups and agencies for ongoing information sharing and expanded systems-level advocacy.
- Organize an annual advocacy gathering for socialization and knowledge mobilization.
- Carry out other activities to fulfil core function 3.

**Monitoring and Evaluation**
- Collaborate with the Manager, Research and Evaluation to develop evaluation tools for measuring overall program effectiveness. Implement project evaluation and collate emerging data.
- Utilize data for reporting, informing recommendations and prepare regular evaluation and general program reports.
- Collate feedback report from stakeholders.

**Other Duties**
- Manage and maintain confidential records and confidentiality requirements.
- Develop and maintain trusting relationships with children and their families, and education stakeholders.
- Recruit and supervise community volunteers.
- Perform other duties as assigned.

**Minimum Qualifications**
- Bachelor’s degree in Social Work, Child and Youth Care, Education or applicable field.
- 2+ years’ experience advocating for immigrant children and families in Ontario.
- 3+ years’ experience working with grade 1-12 students in academic, vocational, or social programs.
- Successful experience working within the Black community in general and/or newcomer Black population in Ontario.
- Spoken and written French language competence. West African cultural and language capacity is an advantage.
- Excellent communication, with demonstrable relationship building and negotiation skills.
- Demonstrable knowledge of the functioning of school boards (Toronto and/or Ontario).
- Demonstrated ability to maintain confidential records and privacy regulations.
- Current Police vulnerable sector check.

**Desired Qualifications**:

- African cul