Closing date: Sunday 7th September at midnight 

Ref 7009

Save the Children UK has an exciting opportunity for a community focussed and collaborative individual with extensive experience working with different groups of people to join us as our Participation Manager where you will work with community partners and colleagues across Scotland to co-design activities and solutions that make a real difference in people's lives). 

Please note: This is a Scotland based role and this will be 2-4 days per month in our Edinburgh office. 

About Us 

Save the Children UK believes every child deserves a future. In the UK and around the world, we work every day to give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm.  When crisis strikes, and children are most vulnerable, we are always among the first to respond and the last to leave.  We ensure children's unique needs are met and their voices are heard. We deliver lasting results for millions of children, including those hardest to reach. 

About the role 

As Participation Manager, you will lead our work engaging children, young people and families with lived experience of poverty – ensuring their voices are central to everything we do. You will be focused on planning & delivering children and young people's participation and embedding a children's rights approach. You will build strategic relationships and ensure we are involving the participation of children and families to co-produce solutions and create meaningful opportunities 

In this role, you will:  

• Build strong, trusting relationships with children, young people and families from low-income backgrounds. 
• Design and facilitate participation activities — like advisory groups, events, and campaigns — that put their experiences front and centre. 
• Support community partners to involve children and young people meaningfully in their own work. 
• Collaborate with policy, campaigns and media colleagues to amplify voices and influence decision-makers. 
• Ensure insights from children and families are recorded and used to shape strategy, practice and policy. 

About you 

To be successful, it is important that you have:  

• Proven experience designing and delivering participation initiatives that are safe, empowering and impactful. 
• A solid understanding of safeguarding and the barriers faced by children and families living in poverty. 
• A background in policy influence or community engagement, with experience working directly with families and young people. 
• Strong project management skills – confident juggling multiple priorities while staying focused on quality and outcomes. 
• A deep commitment to inclusive and rights-based participation. 
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to build trust and rapport across communities and teams. 
• Commitment to Save the Children's vision, mission and values. 

What we offer you: 

Working for a charity provides one of the best benefits there is – a sense of purpose and reward for helping others. However, we understand the importance of giving back to our employees to ensure a happy and healthy working environment and work/life balance. 

• We focus on flexibility, inclusion, collaboration, health and wellbeing both in and outside of work. 
• We provide a wide range of benefits which will reward your hard work, motivate you, and inspire you to work to improve the lives of children every day.

Please note: To avoid disappointment, you are advised to submit your application as soon as possible as we reserve the right to close the vacancy early if a high volume of applications are received. This is to ensure that we can manage application levels whilst maintaining a positive candidate experience. Unfortunately once a vacancy has closed, we are unable to consider further applications.

Ways of Working:

The majority of our roles can be performed remotely in the UK, but there are likely to be times when you will be required to come to your contracted office (up to 2-4 days per month or 6-8 days per quarter).  This will be agreed with your Line Manager and team and is intended to be time spent on collaborating with colleagues and relationship building. 

Please note: travel costs to your contracted office will be at your own expense. 

Flexible Working - We are happy to discuss flexible working options at interview.

Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion: 

Save the Children UK believes in a world that is fair, inclusive and equitable where all children have the opportunity to change their world. We apply this to our workforce and we are committed to developing and supporting a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organisation where all employees have a sense of belonging and feel that they can be "Free to Be Me". We are not looking for just one type of person - we want to recruit people who can add fresh perspectives, innovative ideas or challenge that disrupts the risk of group think. 

We are especially interested in people whose childhood experiences - of life on a low income, of migration, of being in a racialised community, of the care system, of being LGBT+ or in an LGBT+ family or living with (or with someone with) a disability - help us to see things we might otherwise miss. Whatever your story is we want to hear it because we know that different voices, ideas, perspectives and knowledge, working together will enable us to better the lives of children around the world. This is the reason why we are all here.