Crisis Anticipation and Disaster Risk Finance Officer

Location (Role): Farringdon London, with International travel

Contract Type: Fixed Term Contract / Internal Secondment

Full / Part Time: Full time (flexible working options available)

Contract Duration: 1 year

Closing Date: 7 July 2022

Salary Range: 30,400-33,600

The job of a Save the Children’s UK Crisis Anticipation and Disaster Risk Finance Officer is varied and rewarding

• Would you like the opportunity to be directly involved in ensuring that emergency financial aid is delivered effectively and quickly to people affected by crises around the world?
• Are you looking to expand your experience and knowledge of early action, risk financing, multilateral and networked coordination and humanitarian innovation?
• Are you motivated by our vision of creating a world where every child doesn’t just survive, but thrives, and can go on to change the world?

If the answers to these questions are yes, we would love to hear from you!

About Us

We stand side by side with children in the toughest places to be a child. We do whatever it takes to make sure they survive, get protection when they’re in danger, and have the chance to learn.

The Start Network was incubated by SCUK over the last 10-years and became an independent entity comprised of multiple humanitarian agencies and an operational team referred to as the Start Platform, in May 2019. The Start Network is made up of more than 40 aid agencies, of which Save the Children is one, working across five continents, ranging from large international organisations to national NGOs. The aim of the Start Network is to deliver more effective emergency aid, harnessing the power and knowledge of the network to make faster and better decisions to help people affected by crises. It advocates for radical change to the system so that the world can better deal with the humanitarian challenges of today and in the future.

The Start Platform maintains a strong relationship with Save the Children as the grant custodian of many of the Start Network’s programmes. The Start Crisis Anticipation and Risk Financing Team is a newly formed team which builds off the work of two former teams over the last 3-years. It is managed within Save the Children’s Humanitarian Business Transformation Team but sits with the wider Start Programmes team (SCUK dedicated grant custodian team) and works closely with colleagues in the Start Platform.

Job Purpose

This role presents an exciting capacity building opportunity to an experienced and dynamic Officer looking to expand their experience and knowledge of early action, risk financing, network coordination and humanitarian innovation. This role is based within the Anticipation and Risk Financing Team in Start Network Programmes Team who are hosted by Save the Children UK.

The Anticipation and Risk Finance Officer will play an important administrative and programmatic support role, engaging in grant administration and reporting on both day-to-day operations and the roll out of new projects and pilots across a range of disaster risk financing and anticipation initiatives. This will include capacity building activities as well as activities relating to MEAL. In addition, you will play an active support role in the substantial external coordination and convening work that both teams carry out with a wide range of stakeholders including academic institutions. You will also provide general administrative and coordination support to the team.

Main Accountabilities

Team Operations

• Support the Operations Lead with team-wide initiatives, specific operational pieces of work including but not limited to proposal and report writing, programme briefs and budget tracking of projects etc.
• Support the team with navigating Save the Children UK processes linked to HR, award management, procurement and contract management
• Maintain a complete, accessible and updated filing and archiving system of projects
• Support meetings, conferences, workshop and training events by supporting the logistical arrangements, developing and compiling documents for discussion taking minutes, developing action trackers and following up on progress against this.
• Support the delivery of communications resources to help raise the profile of our work
• Logistic arrangements for team travel
• Supporting the sign off processes for anticipation and risk financing documentation within Save the Children legal, risk, insurance, programmes, recruitment, etc.
• Supporting communications with members on disaster risk financing and anticipation work. (i.e. developing surveys, sending out group emails etc)
• Facilitate and strengthen knowledge management and work with team members proactively to identify potential areas of collaboration and overlap
• Support the Technical team with the alert cycle for anticipation alerts (including integrating advisory inputs from the FOREWARN community)
• Support the Partnerships Advisor with organisation of FOREWARN events, including event planning and running
• Provide programme and coordination support to global and national level initiatives and
• Provide operational surge support as necessary during new project start up phases or to the Start Fund on weekend/public holiday alert duty.

MEAL and wider support to Technical team

• Support the development of project specific communications materials (e.g.: case studies/1-pagers) that demonstrate best practice in anticipation and risk financing.
• Arrange learning exchanges and workshops and keep the risk financing and anticipation learning log up to date
• Support the development of the Anticipation and Risk Financing training packages, working with internal and external technical experts to bring together the core materials and facilitators notes. Coordinate the roll-out and testing of the training in different locations

Country / hub pilot operations–

• Assist the ‘Country Support Manager’ to set up and manage anticipation and risk financing systems in country where needed

Person Profile

Experience

• Experience of working in a humanitarian or development organization
• Experience of organising or helping to organise events
• Experience of general administrative work in an office environment
• Experience of project support and strong coordination skills

Abilities

• Excellent interpersonal skills, with an ability to work with people from a range of backgrounds and cultures
• A ‘can-do’ attitude, ability to work on own initiative and to deliver results against tight deadlines with good quality results
• A flexible approach to working and ability to respond at short notice to a wide variety of tasks
• Ability to travel internationally, occasionally at short notice and to remote and insecure locations
• Excellent problem-solving and organisational skills
• Excellent Presentation and Communication Skills
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, including computer literacy and confidence in using Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint

Aptitude

• An awareness of the challenges of distance support and cultural differences
• Understanding of and commitment to humanitarian work
• A demonstrable commitment to the principles of diversity and inclusion and their practical application and integration in the work environment
• A commitment to Save the Children UK’s aims and core values of accountability, ambition, collaboration, creativity, and integrity

Remote Working:

The majority of SCUK employees are currently working remotely within the UK in line with UK Government guidance. Commencing July 2021 we will transition to flexible and hybrid ways of working (i.e. a mixture of remote/home and office-based working) as social distancing restrictions ease.

We are happy to discuss flexible working options at interview**.**

Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion:

Save the Children UK is committed to diversity and equality of opportunity in all aspects of our work both external and internal. We strive to be an inclusive employer and particularly encourage applications from under-represented groups such as returning parents or carers who are re-entering work after a career break, people who are LGBT+, from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, with a disability, impairment, learning difference or long-term condition, with caring responsibilities, from different nations and regions, and from less advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds.