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JOB LOCATION - REMOTE
ABOUT YLABS
YLabs is a leading global design and research organization designing technologies that amplify youth power, agency, and opportunity. Founded in 2014 at the Harvard Innovation Lab, YLabs partners with young people to co-create inclusive digital products and services that improve their lives. Our design process opens spaces where young people’s ideas can become a reality – where they are the architects of the solutions to their most pressing challenges.
YLabs multidisciplinary team delivers youth-driven innovation and impact at scale. Our team combines expertise in youth-driven design with adolescent health, climate, livelihoods, digital product design, behavioral science, and epidemiology. Based in Rwanda and the USA, we’ve worked in 18 countries to date on projects spanning three focus areas: optimum health and wellness, improved economic opportunity, and increased climate resilience.
Find out more about our projects here: https://www.ylabsglobal.org/work
Scope of Work
We are seeking a Safeguarding Consultant to help us ensure that our safeguarding system meets recognised standards and that our own team can run without ongoing external support. The consultancy has four objectives:
Assess our current safeguarding practice against the Keeping Children Safe International Child Safeguarding Standards, major donor requirements, and the laws of our priority fieldwork countries.
Validate and refine who owns what across functions, and recommend a sustainable permanent staffing model.
Strengthen the policies, processes and tools for safe recruitment, fieldwork, partners and incident response.
Review our training and build internal capacity so that YLabs staff can deliver and maintain the system.
Proposed Activities
Phase 1: Baseline (Week 1 to 3)
Review existing policies, protocols, training materials, contracts and our internal responsibility map.
Interview Operations, Programs, the Global Safeguarding Lead, Impact and project teams.
Score current practice against the industry standards and identify priority gaps.
Produce a short context note for each fieldwork country covering police clearance or good-conduct certificate options and lead times, mandatory reporting duties, age of consent and majority, and data protection law.
Agree on a priorities workplan for Phase 2.
Phase 2: Build (Week 4 to 11)
Roles and staffing: Review our responsibility map and decision rights, including go/no-go authority for high-risk fieldwork. Recommend a permanent staffing model with an estimate of the time safeguarding takes per project. Draft safeguarding language for relevant job descriptions.
Policies: Review our global policy suite (safeguarding, child protection, code of conduct, data protection, ethical images, risk assessment templates/matrices) and identify gaps and revise, including what an AI policy should cover. Build a requirements matrix showing how YLabs policy meets industry standards guidelines and donor requirements.
Safe recruitment: Reference check template with safeguarding questions, interview questions, self-declaration form, and validation of our pre-fieldwork clearance checklist.
Fieldwork: Templates for the project safeguarding protocol, risk assessment and go/no-go decision, plus a practical approach to daily field monitoring. This will also cover how safeguarding risks to YLabs staff and field teams are reflected in field protocols.
Participants: Guidance on how young participants can raise concerns, youth consent, safeguarding in digital and phone-based engagement, and use of images and stories.
Partners and vendors: Due diligence checklist, standard contract clauses, and guidance on data sharing agreements.
Incident response: Reporting and escalation protocol, including donor notification within required timeframes, survivor-centred response guidance, and options for referring investigations.
Training: Review our core curriculum and project briefings, revise materials, design role-based training for Ops, Project Leads and Project Safeguarding Leads, and recommend external training.
Oversight and costing: A short set of indicators for a quarterly leadership dashboard, an annual review cycle, and guidance on costing safeguarding into proposals and budgets.
Phase 3: Handover (Weeks 12 to 14)
Run train-the-trainer sessions for the Global Safeguarding Lead and Project Safeguarding Leads.
Hold a handover session with Operations and Programs.
Deliver a final report with a 12-month roadmap.
DELIVERABLES
Phase 1: Baseline
Weeks 1 to 3
Inception note and agreed workplan (week 1)
Assessment of the gaps
Deep Listening - Review our current safeguarding tools, processes and policies to identify any policy or implementation gaps of entire set-up and field sprint processes.
Phase 2: Build
Weeks 4 to 11
Roles, decision rights and permanent staffing model recommendation,
Safe recruitment toolkit
Revised policies and requirements matrix, Incident reporting and escalation protocol. Additionally vendor guidelines
Fieldwork toolkit: protocol, risk assessment and go/no-go templates
Participant reporting, consent and digital engagement guidance
Revised training materials and external training recommendations
Oversight dashboard indicators and costing guidance
Deep Listening
Review policy and tools through the lens of funder priority countries and flag key considerations for implementation.
Explore and recommend supportive safety measures, including viable insurance coverage options and localized security/health protocols for our field researchers.
Create a system on how to select and evaluate local referral services (clinical, psychosocial, security) tailored to the specific priority countries.
Assist in gently clarifying and assigning safeguarding roles and responsibilities not just at the organizational level, but specifically at the Deep Listening project level based on the country of deployment.
Enhance our existing tools by integrating thoughtful gender and disability inclusion guidance
Phase 3: Handover
Weeks 12 to 14
Train-the-trainer sessions and handover session
Final report with 12-month roadmap
Deep Listening: Ensure that the recommended training systems, as well as the departmental safeguarding processes and tools, are practically adapted so our DL project teams and cluster leads feel confident implementing and maintaining them independently
Consultant profile
We are looking for a practitioner who has built safeguarding systems for organizations working directly with children and youth in sub-Saharan Africa.
Required
At least 7 years of safeguarding experience in international development or humanitarian settings, with a focus on children and youth.
Experience designing safeguarding policies, systems and tools for small or mid-sized organizations.
Working knowledge of the Keeping Children Safe, good practice and major donor requirements.
Experience with safe recruitment practices.
Proven ability to design and deliver training, including train-the-trainer.
Desirable
Experience in our fieldwork countries, ideally Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique and Nigeria.
Experience in research or data-collection settings, including research ethics and IRB processes.
Knowledge of data protection in safeguarding.
APPLICATION PROCESS
To apply, submit your application here by Monday 10 November 2026 at 9 am CAT. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis by our Hiring Committee. We hope that we can start this work by at least end of November/early December. YLabs recognizes the effort that goes into submitting an application; all applications received during the posting period will be reviewed, and all candidates will be notified of their application status once the hiring process begins.
All YLabs offers of employment are conditional on satisfactory background check and criminal record clearances.
EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY
YLabs is committed to building teams and policies that promote equity, justice, and belonging at work. We strongly encourage people from all cultures, races, educational backgrounds, socio-economic classes, sexual orientations, age, gender, and physical abilities to apply. We do not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, familial status, marital status, caregiver status, or any other category protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.
