The Save the Children Fund, commonly known as Save the Children, was established in the United Kingdom in 1919 to improve the lives of children through better education, health care, and economic opportunities, as well as providing emergency aid in natural disasters, war, and other conflicts. After passing a century, which it celebrated in 2019, it is now a global movement made up of 29 national member organizations which work in 120 countries.

Summary 

Save the Children is seeking a Disaster Risk Management (DRM) Specialist for an anticipated five-year USAID-funded Disaster Risk Management activity in Ethiopia. The program will enable timely anticipatory and early action to preempt crises and reduce the impact of shocks in Ethiopia by strengthening DRM planning and preparedness, improving DRM coordination, and enhancing resource mobilization and management. The activity will also strengthen gender in emergencies (GiE) capacity, increase private sector engagement in DRM, and expand local organizations’ capacity to engage in DRM. The proposed program will be an integrated, multi-sectoral development program and will align with other USAID-funded programs in country.

The DRM Specialist will provide the strategic leadership to the DRM and anticipatory action interventions for the project and provide technical advice and support to the project team and key stakeholders on critical humanitarian preparedness, climate change risk reduction related initiatives.   Working in collaboration with the SC staff and partners, the DRM Specialist will contribute to building a strong network of key stakeholders including government, UN agencies, donors, CSOs, private sector, and community-based organizations.  They will provide timely technical updates, and support effective, adaptive, and innovative DRM programming as well as develop guidance to be adaptable and meet the program objectives in the target regions.

Hiring is contingent upon successful award of the project and USAID approval of the proposed candidate.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities 

• Strengthen the resilience of target communities and advise with proactive preparedness measures to ensure accurate and timely early warning, response, and recovery actions to minimize the loss and damage and ensure other thematic areas incorporate DRM and climate action to mitigate impacts of disasters on children and their communities.
• Deliver technical support to the project particularly involving targeted populations, for community preparedness, early warning systems, institutional preparedness, climate adaptation and mitigation activities.
• Provide day-to-day technical support and guidance on DRM and anticipatory action at the strategic, program, and project levels in the areas of national, institutional, and local-level programming.
• Work closely with regional and local TAs to ensure proper integration of multisector activities into DRM systems.
• Provide capacity building to the project staff, partner organizations, and stakeholder institutions and design strategies for relevant policy advocacy.
• Lead the analysis of DRM, early warning and anticipatory action systems and services, identify gaps, possibilities for multisector integration into DRM process and systems, position design actions based on learnings from existing work, to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of the project.
• Coordinate with DRM, early warning, and anticipatory action stakeholders at National and Subnational levels.
• Provide technical oversight on the DRM, early warning, and anticipatory action project activities, as well as overall integration of DRM activities across all project sector interventions (WASH, Protection)
• Enable partners to develop capacity and systems such that they can manage donor requirements in an empowering way that serves the project objectives.
• Provide technical inputs to reporting so that narrative reports are capturing the required technical outputs, which leads to high-quality reporting.
• Conduct regular field visits, including discussions with partners, and other critical stakeholders.
• Lead and contribute to multi-disciplinary working and sharing of necessary information across the project team to support effective decision-making.
• Regularly coordinate and collaborate with national and international technical advisors to provide the most appropriate and updated technical inputs to the project to deliver the best services to the target populations.
• Support to mainstream DRM into every lead sector institution such as the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), the Ministry of Health (MoH), the Ministry of Water, Irrigation, and Electricity (MoWIE).

Required Background and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in social sciences, international development, Disaster Risk Reduction, environment/climate change and/or related field.
• Minimum of eight years of professional experience in technical aspects of DRM and managing projects related to humanitarian preparedness, DRM, climate change or resiliency.
• Prior experience working in Ethiopia is preferred.
• Previous experience in program management across multiple locations.
• Experience in managing donor programs including transitional phase types of awards that contribute to the nexus of humanitarian and development work.
• Commitment to, thorough understanding of, and ability to train staff in participation and accountability approaches.
• Ability and willingness to travel frequently.
• Excellent written communication and presentation skills in English.