Plan International UK (PIUK) is a global children’s charity. We work to give every child the same chance in life. In every child there’s a spark of imagination, curiosity and ambition. But not every child is born with the same opportunities. When you face poverty or violence the odds are stacked against you. When you’re a girl it’s even harder to be safe, to be in school and to be in charge of your body. All children deserve an education, health care and clean water. All children deserve the chance to thrive. We’re fighting so every child, especially every girl, knows their value. We’re fighting so the communities they’re growing up in – and the world around them – value them too. And if disaster strikes, we’re there to protect children, keep them learning and help them recover.
With regards to disaster risk management, of the 55 countries in the Plan network, around 30 are regularly affected by rapid onset or complex crises. Plan International UK is one of a number of support / fundraising offices that provide financial and programme support to the Plan country offices for humanitarian programming. The PIUK Disaster Risk Management Unit (DRMU) is a leader in the development of Plan’s global disaster work and is committed to becoming a centre of excellence in key technical areas. The DRMU team aims to support country offices dealing with rapid onset and protracted disasters arising both from natural and complex causes.
The unit works across the whole spectrum of disaster work from risk reduction through to recovery. We fund our work through a multitude of sources: primarily by grants from institutional donors, corporate partnerships and individual donors. DRMU works in collaboration and consortia with many of the major UK NGOs and is an active member of the Disaster Emergencies Committee and START Network.
JOB PURPOSE
The Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) Adviser is a key role in the DRMU, making a contribution to realising the team’s growth ambitions through enhanced quality of cash programming. The CVA Adviser supports the scale up of our emergency work in some of the most vulnerable and fragile contexts by ensuring effective programme design and implementation of CVA in responses (where appropriate) in rapid onset and protracted crisis. The scope of the role includes:
- Supporting the development of Plan International UK’s disasters and emergencies portfolio as part of the Disaster Risk Management Unit, with particular attention to projects using a CVA modality, enabling the increased use of cash across the DRMU programme portfolio;
- Supporting Plan International’s Country Offices’ response to specific humanitarian crises, particularly those that require scaling up. This will include proposal development, providing technical advice in designing, implementation and monitoring of CVA and market-based programmes in emergencies and recovery phases, addressing the specific needs of young/ adolescent girls and young women;
- Promoting the integration of CVA across the IPPD programme portfolio, including programming that addresses disaster risk, strengthening community resilience, education, child protection, gender and social protection;
- Raising the profile of the Plan International UK as an actor in cash and voucher assistance.
Key Deliverables
This role provides technical leadership in CVA for PIUK, leading on the implementation of the Plan UK CVA Action Plan. This role does so through continuous collaboration with technical
advisers across DRMU and IPPD strengthen Plan UK’s technical offer as a partner to Country Offices and donors.
Programme Quality (60%)
- Working closely with PIUK Programme Specialists, support Plan International Country Offices, throughout the project cycle to ensure quality design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of projects;
- Ensure project design and implementation embeds best practice from the CVA community, with particular attention to education and child protection sectors, promoting gender equality in the use of CVA, and a strong focus on safe programming approaches; ensure activities adhere to technical standards including SPHERE, CALP and cluster recommendations;
- In the development of projects using CVA modalities, ensure CVA feasibility and response analysis design requirements are met including need assessments, market assessments, delivery mechanism, gender and protection risk assessments;
- Support country offices to ensure accountability to affected people is embedded within CVA at project level;
- Provide technical support during implementation and monitoring of CVA and market-based programmes, including provision of, and guidance on, tools and procedures to ensure high quality delivery;
- Work with Global Hub (Plan International) Cash Based Programme in Emergencies Specialist, Technical Team Lead and Head of Disaster Response at Plan International to ensure clear alignment with Country Offices identified needs and demands for support;
- Alongside PlUK Programme Specialists, collaborate with Country and Regional Office emergency response managers to consider cash/vouchers as a modality in the response and support scale up of the approach;
- Supporting Country Offices to implement CVA with effective governance, due diligence and donor compliance.
Learning and Capacity Building (15%)
- Build awareness and internal expertise of Plan International UK on the use of CVA, via trainings, presentations and facilitating the internal CVA Community of Practice with a specific focus on addressing the needs of girls;
- Collaborate with sectoral teams at GH and National Offices to develop appropriate guidance on the use of cash in education and child protection programmes, for example CVA for Adolescents Guidance;
- Respond to requests from Country Offices to support capacity building, through facilitating in-country training (travel permitted), and partake in mentoring when the scheme is initiated;
- In collaboration with Global Hub, develop tools to support operationalisation of CVA guidance for Country Office’s and Programme Specialists;
- In collaboration with the global hub CVA team, develop a strong monitoring and evaluation framework incorporating global guidance on CVA monitoring indicators;
- Support Global Hub CVA team to disseminate best practice guidance and tools widely throughout the federation, through webinars, engagement with the CVA email fora and trainings (remote or in-country where permitted);
- Use PlUK’s learning log to document lessons learned from cash and voucher interventions to support Plan International continuously learn from its programmes;
- Identifying opportunities to digitalise Plan’s delivery of CVA, exploring different solutions for cash such as the use of Blockchain.
Representation and Partnership (5%)
External working groups;
- Gender and Cash GB sub workstream
- Local partnerships sub workstream
- Geneva based cash working group
Internal groups;
- Cross-Plan CVA coordination group
- Cross-Plan Economic security influencing reference group
- During in-country visits represent Plan International at relevant clusters, cash working groups, and other events related to cash and market-based programming;
- Identify opportunities and establish dialogue towards partnerships with other humanitarian agencies.
Fundraising (5%)
- Working with business development colleagues, identify and develop relationships with donors positioning Plan International for potential funding opportunities to increase the scale and quality of CVA in
General
- Ensure that all activities undertaken on behalf of Plan International UK, externally or internally, are in line with the overall aims of the organisation and with policies and procedures.
- Participate in training and other activities as requested Deliver high quality results in line with terms of reference, in a way which maintains the reputation of Plan International UK and Plan International Inc
- Be open to change and demonstrate a flexible and adaptable approach
- Work collaboratively with other departments and be a supportive and effective team member
Awareness & Representation
- Commitment to Plan’s position on promoting girls’ rights and gender equality and integrating this into all aspects of
- Commitment to child safeguarding and to being confident and competent in meeting safeguarding responsibilities
Level of responsibility for safeguarding children and young people
- High – Has responsibility for ensuring Child Safeguarding procedures or policies are adhered to. As this role will travel to programmes in country, a Basic Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check will be required.
Level of Budgetary Responsibility
- Medium – The Programme Manager will design budget and monitor financial expenditure with the support of the Finance Department
PERSONAL COMPETENCIES
Communicating with all stakeholders
- Gain commitment from a wide range of people using advocacy, influencing and negotiating skills,
- Communicate the organisation’s strategies and approaches efficiently and
- Establish strong working relationships with colleagues from different functions and
- Support team members to also communicate with beneficiaries, communities and authorities in an appropriate and transparent manner
Working effectively and efficiently
- Work accurately and efficiently to changing deadlines and targets, managing a wide and varied workload, using strong organisational skills and a keen eye for detail.
- Be flexible and remain calm under pressure
- Be proactive and able to seek opportunities and manage own workplan
Demonstrating Plan values
- Keeps up to date with changes in their own area of responsibility and understands how the changes in the external environment may affect them.
- Ensures that impact is a feature of their work and maintains continuous monitoring, suggesting changes where appropriate.
RELEVANT EXPERIENCE
The successful candidate will have experience of:
- Designing and implementing emergency/humanitarian projects and programming with a particular focus on cash/ voucher, in-kind food, and market-based programming; experience in DRR programming a bonus
- Field experience in designing and implementing cash projects and programmes
- Demonstrable experience implementing CVA for protection and/ or gender outcomes
- Securing institutional funding and overseeing projects from major humanitarian donors and an understanding of institutional donors’ requirements and operating styles
- Leading and participating in conducting needs assessments, proposal development and budgeting and humanitarian coordination
- Providing training in-country; on-the-job training and capacity building around cash programming
- Working through partners to raise and manage major donor grants
- Experience advocating for protection and gender within CVA interventions and ability to analyse potential risks in CVA, for example those linked to GBV.
- Integrating and evidencing accountability in programming
- Participating in Cash Working Groups and relevant Clusters at country level during deployment; meeting with in-country donors and peer agencies, particularly cash specialists.
SPECIFIC SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE
The successful candidate will have the ability to:
- Demonstrate an awareness of child safeguarding issues
- Ability to build strong working relationships with a wide range of stakeholders, including remotely
- Apply good analytical skills and problem- solving skills to assess information on humanitarian issues
- Demonstrate good analytical and problem-solving skills
- Demonstrate staff capacity building and motivation skills through teamwork and networking, including with colleagues from different cultures and functions
- Travel at short notice to emergency contexts and undertake frequent travel to field sites.
- Write high quality funding submissions and donor reports.
The successful candidate will have knowledge of:
- Proficiency in French and/or Spanish is highly desirable for this role.
- Strong understanding of international humanitarian standards and Child Protection Minimum Standards.
- A post-graduate degree related to the sector, or significant equivalent experience in the humanitarian sector.
- Strong experience and knowledge of the Do No Harm and conflict sensitivity approaches
- Extensive understanding of Social Safety Nets, Livelihoods and associated methodologies
- Programme monitoring and evaluation approaches