Emergency Cash and Anticipatory Action Specialist at International Rescue Committee

MAJOR RESPONSIBILITIES:

Preparedness and Readiness work

• Support the EmU STA for Cash and Emergencies and the IRC’s regional TAs in ensuring IRC country programs in the IRC’s Emergency Watchlist Countries and those with forecasted climate events implement specific actions to ensure cash readiness by conducting baseline assessments of preparedness and actioning steps to improve readiness for cash including staff training and capacity building, SOP development.
• Provide expert remote or in-person support focusing on conducting readiness assessments, training staff on CVA, mapping and contracting implementing partners and context-appropriate financial service providers, and leveraging digital technologies to enhance efficiency, scale, and speed.
• Lead the development and improvement of key strategic resources for cash and basic needs in emergencies including Technical Frameworks and user-friendly program implementation tools (IRC’s STEP toolkits) for use during emergency and AA interventions.
• Support set up for and standardization of emergency cash and basic needs M&E systems/practices for emergency and AA responses by partnering with Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEAL) teams in EmU, the ERD Technical Unit, and IRC’s Measurement Unit.
• As needed, support Household Economic Analysis (HEA) and AA contingency planning and ensure interventions are poised to deliver quality and compliant CVA (and if required, other types of distributions), including components of targeting, selection, transfer value calculation, distribution, monitoring, and learning. This might include in-person deployments.
• Track budgets and expenditures and support donor engagement for strategic projects, when needed.

Business Development and Strategic Direction 

• Along with the STA for Cash & Emergencies, support the AA team with strategy and overall program design in relation to the CVA components (and other distribution-based programming).
• Work with EmU, TU, and AA leads to refine how we can (and when we should) ensure both pre-shock and post-shock support is provided to the affected communities, and identify priorities and opportunities for strategic program implementation.
• Provide technical inputs to AA business development on cash or other distribution components, ensuring technical quality and adherence with IRC CVA policies and procedures.
• Collaborate with the AA team in exploring AA design options that spans other outcome areas (not just economic/basic needs), including health, WASH, education, and protection; and that forecast and act on different types of events, including conflict, etc.
• Champion a culture of effective and respective partnerships and promote partner-led emergency and AA programming in line with IRC’s “why not partner?” and ‘cash-first’ approach.
• Other support in advancing and cash and AA programming within and outside of IRC as requested.

Team Culture (cross-cutting)

• Build and maintain strong working relationships with EmU, TechEx, AA, and regional colleagues and continually promote a culture of partnership and collaboration.
• Cultivate and maintain a positive, collaborative, safe and protective work environment, while additionally setting an example of ‘One IRC’-way of working within the team, EmU and the wider organization.
• Contribute to efforts across EmU to promote gender equality, diversity and more inclusive practice across our programming and our ways of working.

KEY WORKING RELATIONSHIPS:

• Position Reports to: Senior Technical Advisor, Cash and Emergencies with management in partnership with the Senior Anticipatory Action Specialist. 
• Position directly supervises:  N/A. When required, may temporarily supervise external emergency roster or country team personnel.
• Other contacts: Close working relationships with other technical sectors in the EmU’s Quality in Emergencies (QiE) team (Health, Protection, Education, Partnerships) and the Director of Program Quality and Performance in Emergencies; operations staff across EmU (especially Finance and Supply Chain); the ERD Technical Unit (including Regionally aligned Cash TAs); the Anticipatory Action team (including climate analysts); and the Director for Program Quality & performance in Emergencies.

JOB REQUIREMENTS: 

• Education: University degree in a related field such as economics or related field. 
• Work Experience: 6+ years of experience in CVA programming, food security, or emergency livelihoods programming in low-resource settings, with 3+ years working in emergency settings (conflict, disaster/crisis, and outbreaks). Experience starting-up cash and basic needs emergency responses, and working on AA programming or similar forecast-based finance, is strongly preferred.