Technical Advisor II For Emergency Program Quality And Management

About CRS

Catholic Relief Services is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. CRS works to save, protect, and transform lives in need in more than 100 countries, without regard to race, religion or nationality. CRS' relief and development work is accomplished through programs of emergency response, HIV, health, agriculture, education, microfinance and peacebuilding.

The Humanitarian Response Department (HRD) provides leadership and support to CRS emergency programming. The HRD strengthens CRS' impact through high quality, innovative programs; improved technical and management capacity at the field level; and active engagement in global efforts to promote excellence and learning in humanitarian response. The HRD has technical staff that supports emergency program planning, rapid response, and capacity strengthening of staff and partners worldwide.

NOTE: This is a global remote position; CRS will only consider candidates who are based in countries where we have existing offices. CRS does not sponsor visas for remote employees.

Job Summary:

You will provide technical advice, guidance, and support to a wide range of program design and implementation issues with a focus on larger projects in the area of Emergency Response and Recovery in line with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) program quality principles and standards, donor guidelines, and industry best practices to regional and Country Program (CP) teams to advance the delivery of high-quality programming to the poor and vulnerable.

This includes:

• Providing rapid deployment program quality, management and leadership capacity for breaking and ongoing humanitarian responses;

• Guiding CPs and partners on humanitarian funding opportunities and supporting humanitarian proposal design/development, in coordination with the regional teams and the HRD sectoral technical advisors;

• Supporting emergency program quality/management knowledge management, capacity building and sharing as requested to ensure best practices and learning are shared across country programs/partners; and

• Engaging with the regional/CP teams to bring a humanitarian lens to discussions on broader program quality initiatives

Your technical knowledge, advice and guidance will contribute to determining how effective, adaptive and innovative CRS' Emergency Response and Recovery programming is across the globe.

Roles and Key Responsibilities:

• Contribute to the development and implementation of agency-wide strategies, standards, tools, and best practices in Emergency Response and Recovery that effectively engage partners, donors and governments. Help ensure a cross-sectoral approach integrating gender, protection mainstreaming, and disaster risk reduction.

• Provide technical solutions to regional and CP teams, remotely and on-site, for strategic planning and how to best apply program design and implementation standards, best practices, partnership principles, tools, and M&E, ensuring high-quality implementation.

• Take on acting emergency leadership roles (e.g., Emergency Coordinator, Head of Office) and support the set up and/or management of emergency field offices, teams, and relief operations as requested during field deployments. Support may also be provided in other response functions such as security, staffing, supply chain/logistics, finance, IT/communications and administration, as needed.

• Contribute to efforts to pre-position CRS for growth opportunities in Emergency Response and Recovery. Lead or contribute to the development of the technical design for large and/or complex proposals, including defining appropriate monitoring systems and indicators. Advise project teams on integrating donor strategies, priorities and technical requirements into CRS' approach.

• Contribute to capacity strengthening initiatives in Emergency Response and Recovery programming for staff and partners by helping to develop learning and training strategies and agendas/curricula, conducting trainings and workshops, and mentoring and coaching to CP staff. Capacity strengthening approaches may include formal and on-the-job training; development/streamlining of operational policies/systems; accompaniment of partners, etc. as appropriate.

• Contribute to knowledge management and learning through collecting and analyzing program data, evaluating strategic projects, assisting with measuring program impact, capturing and sharing lessons learned and best practices, and research and internal reports.

• Establish and maintain relationships with donors, peer organizations, research and other institutions. Participate in forums in the area of Emergency Response and Recovery to collect and share best practices and promote CRS' work.

• Represent the agency and partners at cluster, donor and coordination meetings in the field and at international cluster meetings, as requested.

• Promote health and wellbeing of CRS and partner emergency staff.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Excellent relationship management skills with ability to influence and get buy-in from people not under direct supervision and to work with individuals in diverse geographical and cultural settings.

• Strong strategic, analytical, problem-solving and systems thinking skills with capacity to see the big picture and ability to make sound judgment

• Strong written and oral communication skills

• Strong presentation, facilitation, training, mentoring, and coaching skills

• Proactive, resourceful and results-oriented

Required Languages: Proficiency (verbal and written) in English and French. Proficiency in Spanish or Arabic also preferred.

Travel: Must be willing and able to travel up to 60%; duration of a deployment will generally be from 3 to 8 weeks, depending on the needs of the country program. Candidates should have the capacity to live and work in difficult/stressful environments and serve wherever agency needs dictate.

Supervisory Responsibilities:

• The position will often undertake temporary supervision/management roles within CRS country programs during deployments, as requested.

• Regular supervision responsibilities for other PQM team members within the HRD may also be assigned (TBD - based on need and interest of selected candidate).

Key Working Relationships:

Internal: HRD PQM team; HRD technical and operations staff; Regional RTAs and DRD/PQs; Country Representatives, Heads of Programs, Emergency Coordinators and Emergency Program staff of relevant Country Programs.

External: Local emergency partners; Caritas Internationalis Member Organization representatives; peer NGO and UN agency humanitarian staff; humanitarian donors; relevant Emergency Cluster and Working Group members, as relevant.