Regional Cash and Voucher Assistance Technical Advisor At Save the Children

TITLE: Regional Cash and Voucher Assistance Technical Advisor

TEAM/PROGRAMME: PDQ

LOCATION: Senegal, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, DRC

GRADE: INT 4

CONTRACT LENGTH: 2 years

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) because they work country programs; or are visiting country programs; or because they are responsible for implementing the police checking/vetting process staff.

ROLE PURPOSE:

An experienced Cash Assistance and Resiliency (CAR) Technical Advisor to provide remote and in-country expertise to lead design and support implementation of Cash and Voucher and resiliency programmes so they are appropriate, timely, accountable to beneficiaries, donor-compliant and cost-effective, across the region. The Regional CAR advisor will use their in-depth contextual understanding, technical and operational expertise, and relationship building skills to provide a critical link between Save the Children’s global and country level technical work while supporting response planning, quality program design implementation and advocacy. The role will lead to building capacity and fostering networks across country office staff. The role supports regional advocacy and influencing and contributes to strategic partnerships for new business development. It provides inputs into the design and implementation of monitoring and evaluation systems to demonstrate impact, while sharing learning across country offices, and ensuring quality of our programmes. The position will work closely with the Cash and Markets Humanitarian Technical Working Group (HTWG) to ensure global and country office experts are collaborating and sharing learning, best practices, and working towards a comprehensive and unified strategic approach to Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) for child outcomes.

This position will be based in one of the SCI offices of WCA region with extensive travel (up to 50% of time). 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, either through remote support or in-country deployments.

SCOPE OF ROLE:

Reports to: Regional Programme Quality & Development Director with dotted line to Global Head of Programmes Child Poverty and SCI Humanitarian Cash Team.

Staff reporting to this post: Dotted line management of Cash & Voucher technical staff in the region.

Budget Responsibilities: None

Role Dimensions: The role is expected to foster relationships with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders including CVA TAs in Save the Children members, the SCI central Programme Quality & Impact team, the Head of Regional Supply Chain, Head of CVA Operations, advocacy colleagues, Regional Advisors in other sectors, technical counterparts in other organisations, regional donors etc. In particular, it is expected to be an active member of the SCI Humanitarian CashTechnical Working Group while developing and nurturing regional communities of practice.

Context: Humanitarian and Development

Scope: Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, DRC, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Liberia

Primary Technical area: Cash & Market

Primary Sub technical area: Market-based programming for child outcomes

Award funded: 0% (SCI central funding agreed for to be cost recovered in awards)

KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY:

1. Technical Leadership:
2. Act as a custodian of CVA Operational framework, tools, templates & guidelines. Support the review and roll out of CVA related policies and guidance as required and ensure their consistent application at country level.
3. Develop and monitor the implementation of a regional CVA strategy and action plan in consultation with TAs in Resiliency and Poverty and country offices (for a range of “Cash Plus” opportunities to support child outcomes across our breakthroughs.
4. Support other technical experts to understand and contextualise global cash & market guidance, CASH plus and Graduation approaches for their thematic area, learning and evidence and ensure that learning from the region informs our global evidence, technical standards, and strategic direction in CVA, Resiliency as well as in Child Sensitive Social Protection.
5. Capacity build, mentor and build networks across Country Office (CO) Cash & Market/CVA, Resiliency and Child Poverty experts in the region. Identify top talents, capacity gaps and facilitate opportunities for learning.
6. Support the recruitment and provide inductions, training, coaching, and mentoring of CVA positions in countries. Ensure that they feel part of a dynamic and well-connected community of practice. Facilitate cross-country learning between CVA, Resiliency and Livelihoods experts in the region, and participate in cross-country learning with other regions; identify creative ways to share learning, best practices and collectively address challenges, feeding back to global and regional learning.
7. Working closely with the SCI Cash humanitarian team and SCI Humanitarian Preparedness teams, support the identification and implementation of preparedness activities in prioritised countries (e.g. standard operating procedures, framework agreements, feasibility & risk analysis), regularly tracking their preparedness rating and proactively engaging with new COs. When needed, support the design and review of country Emergency Preparedness Plans and Contingency plans.
8. Programme Quality in Design & Implementation:
9. Provide in-country surge support and remote backstopping as needed for all prioritised emergency responses in the region.
10. In collaboration with member technical assistance, support COs with the design, proposal development and donor engagement for key strategic programmes and opportunities; and Support CO to develop concepts that can be ‘pitched’ to donors.
11. Support CO in their implementation and monitoring of key strategic programmes, to ensure high quality delivery, monitoring and evaluation. Work with SC member staff to meet donor compliance and quality standards. Ensure that gender, disability and resilience considerations are reflected in our programme design and implementation.
12. Oversee the design, implementation and monitoring of Cash & Market/CVA-based programmes; ensure that sectoral and internal technical best practice (including Save the Children’s Common Approaches) is applied in collaboration with relevant Country Office technical colleagues.
13. Explore innovative opportunities and trends which could be applied in Cash & Market/CVA-based programming in the region and support country offices to pilot, and document, new or updated tools and guidance, especially with a focus on gender, disability, and resilience.
14. Work with Child Rights Governance colleagues to ensure that a rights based approach is reflected in our programme design and implementation (in line with our child rights programming approach), with a strong focus on child participation
15. Respond to requests for technical expertise from Country Offices in the region where possible/appropriate through Save the Children’s flexible Technical Expertise systems (e.g. Global Humanitarian Surge Platform; TE Request platform), and identify support from others for key regional technical needs.
16. Support Emergency preparedness, recovery, and where appropriate response, including country office capability building for humanitarian response, emergency preparedness planning.
17. Provide oversight of regional CVA projects to ensure their quality and compliance (e.g. ensuring appropriate design and risk management processes, performing spot checks etc)

External Engagement:

1. In collaboration with regional New Business Development, contribute to regional strategic partnerships; identify partners and donors to strengthen our CVA portfolio in the region and maintain an overview of CVA best practices and coordination mechanisms.
2. In collaboration with Advocacy colleagues, influence key regional stakeholders and policymakers to ensure they reflect the needs of children in the countries where we work, such as the Regional Cash Working Group; Regional CaLP Office; Regional Clusters, especially the Nutrition Cluster, the Education Cluster, the Food Security Cluster and others; Collaborative Cash Delivery platforms that may exist in the region.
3. Represent Save the Children at regional and national-level coordination bodies that exist, such as CaLP, Cash Working Groups, or others as relevant.

Female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.