Social Protection Food Security and Livelihoods Technical Adviser

ROLE PURPOSE:

The Social Protection, Food Security, and Livelihoods Technical Advisor (SP& FSL TA) is a critical position for Save the Children in Lebanon and will play the lead role in ensuring the design, implementation and monitoring of high quality social protection, food security, livelihoods, and integrated nutrition programming for thousands of children and their families across the country. This role covers all thematic priorities under Save the Children’s global ambition to end Child Poverty.

The TA provides technical leadership to all our work in the sectors of Child Sensitive Social Protection and Basic Assistance, Food Security, Livelihoods, and Nutrition, with responsibility for developing clear strategic and operational plans, identifying fundraising needs and leading the development of technical proposals, forging strong partnerships with Government, UN, NGO and local civil society counterparts, as well as providing technical support to our implementing teams across three different field locations in Lebanon.

In the event of a major humanitarian emergency, the role holder will be expected to work outside the normal role profile and be able to vary working hours accordingly.

CHILD SAFEGUARDING:

Level 3: the post holder will have contact with children and/or young people either frequently (e.g. once a week or more) or intensively (e.g. four days in one month or more or overnight).

SCOPE OF ROLE:

Reports to: Programme Development & Quality (PDQ) Director

Staff reporting to this post: Social Protection Food Security and Livelihood Specialist

KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY:

Strategic Planning and Leadership

• Provide overall strategic leadership to Save the Children’s work in the Social Protection, Basic Assistance, Food Security, Livelihoods, and Nutrition sectors in Lebanon.
• Lead the development and rollout of these sector strategies for Save the Children in Lebanon, including cross cutting issues related to Nutrition within other sectors
• Provide technical input to the development of country annual plans, area plans, sector strategies and other planning documents.
• Maintain a clear overview of program progress across the sector portfolio to be shared with senior managers.
• Ensure that our education program design benefits from integration with other sectors where possible, and vice versa.

Programme Quality and Standards

• Provide technical expertise, quality assurance and support for Save the Children’s SP&FSL programs, ensuring they are of high quality with reliable data and outcomes.
• Coordinate the development of a technical capacity building plan for SP&FSL staff in Save the Children and our partners in Lebanon, working with field teams to prioritize training needs and resource these appropriately.
• Develop and maintain central database of tools and guidance to support program quality and support the development of technical tools, guidance and documentation as required.
• Oversee knowledge sharing across teams, and ensure that monitoring and evaluation results are understood and used to improve programs.
• Manage the technical knowledge repository and supervise the virtual library of manuals and approaches per type of program, including tools and best practice documentation and evidence to improve and manage program quality.
• Ensure documentation of case studies and dissemination of these both internally and externally working with the Media and Advocacy team.
• Lead in technical assessments including Labor Market Assessments, Household Economy Analysis outcome analyses, and other evidence generation.

Programme Development and Resource Mobilization

• Provide active leadership in Save the Children’s relationships with key donors for the Social Protection and Basic Assistance, Food Security, Livelihood, and Nutrition sectors.
• Ensure clear identification of fundraising needs and priorities in these sectors.
• Identify and assess appropriateness of fundraising opportunities.
• Lead technical development of high quality proposals in line with strategic ambitions.
• Develop set of “off the shelf” concept notes for new or pilot activities.
• Lead donor and partner mapping for these sectors.

Technical Support to Programme Implementation:

• Line-manage project components aimed at technical support to third parties at the national level, such as project implementing partners.
• Lead the technical assessment, selection, and monitoring of SP&FSL implementing partners.
• Support the development of monitoring, information management, and reporting systems that provide information for reporting and program improvement (in conjunction with Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) and field staff), such as Post-Distribution Monitoring and Quality Benchmarks.
• Support high quality reporting by field staff through timely review and guidance.
• Screen technical field manager candidates (and others as appropriate) and support recruitment as needed.
• Assess (in conjunction with line management) and support technical work of Program Managers and sector focal points and support their professional development.
• Promote and facilitate synergies with other thematic program.
• As needed, lead in technical inputs to procurement of program goods or services involving multiple locations, large-scale use of resources, and/or a high level of risk to the agency to ensure program relevance, quality, adherence to technical guidelines, and efficient use of resources.
• Conduct regular field monitoring of activities.
• Where external consultants (local or international) are required to technically support or monitor and evaluate projects, lead the recruitment and subsequent management of contracted consultants as per the recruitment guidelines and Terms of Reference.
• Analyze and provide feedback on program implementation to ensure gender equity, child participation, and child safeguarding.

Partnerships

• Ensure timely support to Partnerships manager on technical identification, selection, and adequate assessment of FSL&SP strategic & implementing partners.
• Ensure appropriate, relevant, and timely provision of technical capacity development including through mobilization of internal and external capacity development opportunities and sharing of all relevant materials/documents, etc.
• Promote joint program design for the advancement of mutual strategic priorities when relevant.
• Commit to joint regular monitoring of implementation progress and achievement towards results, and feeding into programmatic adaptations.
• Maintain strong coordinated working relationships with partners, including relevant government stakeholders.
• Promote Save the Children policies and practice with respect to child protection, child safeguarding, code of conduct, health and safety, equal opportunities and other relevant policies and procedures with implementing partners.
• Improve/strengthen coordination and technical support to local partners including National NGOs, CSOs, and Governmental bodies on child protection.
• Lead the identification of strategic partners for potential consortia projects.

Advocacy and Representation

• Lead external representation of Save the Children’s Child Sensitive Social Protection and Basic Assistance, Food Security, Livelihood, and Nutrition work in Lebanon.
• Represent Save the Children in technical areas to government and other agencies.
• Serve as technical link with Save the Children Members, regional office, FSL Technical Working Groups, and other relevant fora within SCI.
• Represent Save the Children on other national/international technical networks as requested.
• Represent Save the Children in sector working group meetings and other sector coordination forums in Lebanon.
• Contribute to development of advocacy messages and materials in the relevant sectors.
• Support and respond to media requests in the relevant sectors.

​​​​​​​*General*

• Comply with and promote Save the Children policies and practice with respect to child protection, child safeguarding, code of conduct, health and safety, equal opportunities and other relevant policies and procedures.

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QUALIFICATIONS:

• Development professional with a relevant Masters’ Degree or equivalent professional experience
• Excellent written and oral communications skills in English
• Arabic language skills highly desirable

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SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• Minimum 5 years of experience in Livelihoods (or related Child Poverty programming), with experience in humanitarian and developmental contexts in an NGO, UN etc
• Excellent understanding of household level economics, with demonstrable experience leading livelihoods sector programming
• Prior experience in strategic design or assessment of cash transfer or social protection programming
• Ability to link micro-level impacts on children with macro trends at national and regional level in employment and livelihoods
• Strong analytic and planning skills
• Excellent coordination and interpersonal skills with the ability to communicate and negotiate clearly and effectively at all levels
• Excellent writing/editing, budget development and presentation/communication skills. Proven ability to present complex information in a succinct and compelling manner
• Strong results orientation, with the ability to challenge existing mindsets
• Experience of solving complex issues through analysis, capacity to communicate path of action and ensure the commitment of stakeholders
• Highly developed cultural awareness and ability to work well in an international environment with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures
• Ability and willingness to dramatically change work practices and hours, and work with incoming emergency surge teams. Proven ability in working in insecure or hardship environments and to work under tight deadlines
• Ability and willingness to travel extensively to field sites and work independently

Desirable

• Technical experience in Food Security and/or Nutrition is desirable, but not required
• Previous work experience in Lebanon or other areas in the Middle East
• Experience in Household Economy Approach (HEA) is strongly preferred, or familiarity with, Cost of Diet (CoD), Integrated Food Security Phased Classification (IPC), Emergency Markets Mapping and Assessment (EMMA), and/or Minimum Economic Recovery Standards (MERS)

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Additional job responsibilities

The duties and responsibilities as set out above are not exhaustive and the role holder may be required to carry out additional duties within reasonableness of their level of skills and experience.

Equal Opportunities

The role holder is required to carry out the duties in accordance with the SCI Equal Opportunities and Diversity policies and procedures.

Child Safeguarding

We need to keep children safe so our selection process, which includes rigorous background checks, reflects our commitment to the protection of children from abuse.

Health and Safety

The role holder is required to carry out the duties in accordance with SCI Health and Safety policies and procedures.