Location: Remote (South Africa-based) with regular travel required, including to rural communities.

Join us in building a South Africa where every young child can thrive

The Equality Collective is looking for a passionate, legally trained, politically astute, and movement-minded Right to ECD Coordinator to join our growing team and support one of South Africa’s leading advocacy movements for young children, Real Reform for Early Childhood Development (RR4ECD).

The Equality Collective is the secretariat for the RR4ECD movement, providing backbone support for its work. RR4ECD is a national movement working to ensure that every young child enjoys their right to holistic early childhood development. Together with ECD practitioners, community organisations, researchers, lawyers, and advocates across the country, the Equality Collective works to strengthen law and policy, improve government accountability, and build the collective power needed to transform the ECD sector.

We are looking for someone who believes that lasting social change is built through relationships, organising, evidence, law, and collective action. You will help coordinate a growing national movement, support legal and policy advocacy, strengthen practitioner leadership, contribute to campaigns, and ensure that the RR4ECD movement continues to grow in impact.

This is a dynamic role that combines coalition coordination, community organising, legal and policy research, capacity building, stakeholder engagement, and campaign implementation. No two weeks will look the same. One week you may be facilitating a practitioner workshop in a rural community; the next, preparing a submission to Parliament, developing an advocacy brief, coordinating a national campaign, engaging policymakers, or supporting coalition partners to understand and use the law in their advocacy.

This position is ideal for an early-career lawyer or legally trained advocate who is excited by the relationship between law, policy, organising, and social change, enjoys bringing people together, and is able to manage multiple priorities while translating ideas into action.

Our culture

Equality Collective is not a traditional NGO.

We believe that meaningful change happens when communities lead, relationships are prioritised, and organisations create space for initiative, learning, and shared leadership.

We have a culture of trust, autonomy, continuous learning, and reflection. We care deeply about the quality of our work, but equally about the well-being and growth of our team.

If you are looking for a highly structured corporate environment, this role probably is not for you.

If you are excited by complexity, believe in justice, enjoy learning, and want your work to contribute to lasting systemic change, we would love to hear from you.

• Contribute to law and policy reform that advances the right to early childhood development.
• Conduct legal and policy research on constitutional, administrative, and socio-economic rights issues, translating complex legal frameworks into practical advocacy strategies and accessible resources.
• Support engagement with Parliament, national and provincial government departments, municipalities, Chapter 9 institutions, and other public bodies.
• Help prepare submissions, briefing notes, legal and policy analyses, law reform proposals, correspondence, campaign materials, and advocacy resources.
• Support the planning and implementation of RR4ECD’s strategic priorities and advocacy campaigns.
• Organise campaign activities and help mobilise practitioners and partners around national advocacy priorities.
• Build the capacity and confidence of ECD practitioners, coalition members, and other stakeholders to understand the legal and policy frameworks that shape young children's rights, and support them to use this knowledge in advocacy and accountability efforts.
• Coordinate coalition administration, meeting logistics, member communication, and governance processes.
• Support monitoring, evaluation, and reporting to strengthen organisational and movement learning and accountability.

• Holds an LLB qualification.
• Has approximately 3–4 years' experience in movement building/advocacy, social justice, public interest, or civil society work.
• Has an understanding of South Africa's early childhood development sector and its policy and legal landscape, which would be an advantage.
• Is an excellent writer and communicator who can engage diverse audiences.
• Has strong facilitation and relationship-building skills.
• Is highly organised and able to coordinate multiple projects simultaneously.
• Is politically aware and understands how advocacy and systems change happen.
• Enjoys working collaboratively while also taking ownership of their work.
• Is willing and able to travel regularly across South Africa.
• Has a driver’s licence.