Belgium/NL Programme Director, Brussels – apply by 3 May

Award-winning news-literacy initiative Lie Detectors is looking for a dynamic, imaginative and highly connected Programme Director (Belgium/NL) to scale up our work boosting media literacy and fighting fake news in Dutch-speaking classrooms and beyond.

Lie Detectors is an independent not-for-profit organisation that works to boost critical thinking and digital news literacy among young people and their teachers across Europe.

We deploy professional journalists to classrooms to start a lasting conversation about the online disinformation, provide tools for detecting them and convey the workings and challenges facing professional and ethical journalism.

Registered as a Belgian not-for-profit organisation, Lie Detectors is devised as a Europe-wide project. It is currently active in English, German and French in Germany, Belgium and Austria, with its work described in media outlets including the Financial Times and Germany’s ARD tagesschau. It is headquartered in Brussels and has offices in Berlin and Vienna. It won the 2018 Digital Skills Award for work in education.

On the political and advocacy level, Lie Detectors has advised the European Commission as a member of the High Level Expert Group on Fake News and Online Disinformation and the High Level Group on Media Literacy and is highlighted as a best-practice model by the Belgian government’s expert commission on fake news. It advocates for the integration of media literacy learning in teacher training and school curricula as recommended by Unesco and the OECD.

We are currently looking to fill the position of Belgium/NL Programme Director in Brussels to help scale up our existing networks, launching our Dutch-language programme and helping the core project develop and grow.

Job requirements:

As Programme Director you are a talented communicator, well-networked in the media world and experienced in leading and growing a team. You will be responsible for connecting journalists, schools, educational authorities and relevant media-literacy programmes, focusing in particular on Dutch-language networks. You will work closely with the core headquarters and management team and with Lie Detectors’ Belgium Programme Coordinator on strategy and delivery. A natural networker, you will bring extensive knowledge of Belgium’s media landscape and, ideally, its educational systems.

You will recruit professional journalists to participate in training workshops, deploy them into cooperating schools and help create a community of interested stakeholders, guaranteeing the high quality of the classroom visits and their long-term value. You will represent Lie Detectors at conferences and events, with public speaking expected. This full-time position is based in Brussels and involves some travel.

You should

  • Be a native-level Dutch speaker, be fluent in English and have good command of French;
  • Have a high level of entrepreneurial drive, leadership qualities and experience of project management and expansion;
  • Have an exceptional professional network across the Belgian and international media landscape;
  • Have excellent written and verbal communication skills with experience of public speaking and strategic communications;
  • Be a self-starter and unafraid of becoming familiar with new sectors;
  • Have a track record of exercising strategic judgment and decision-making in complex situations.

You will ideally

  • Be bilingual in Dutch and French;
  • Be versed in Belgium’s education systems and related policy environments;
  • Have experience working within the media and/or educational structure of the Netherlands;
  • Have experience working in a start-up environment;
  • Have contacts in the international academia landscape;
  • Have either an educational or a media-related qualification at university level or have ten years’ experience in the field.

What we offer:

  • A competitive non-profit-sector salary with benefits, which will take into account your professional experience;
  • A unique opportunity to help roll out a high-profile and timely movement for critical thinking among children in Europe, working against disinformation with professional journalists and educators across Europe;
  • A high level of autonomy and creativity in scaling up a project with recognized social and political significance;
  • Work within a highly engaged international team and in close collaboration with top management.

 

If this interests you we will be glad to hear from you by 3 May. Please write to us in English, sending us your cover letter, resume and contact details of three references, with the subject heading BELGIUM DIRECTOR: jobs@lie-detectors.org.

Lie Detectors will be assisted in its selection process by Brussels consultancy Local Knowledge. By sending us your application material you agree to being contacted by Lie Detectors and Local Knowledge.