Global Surge Team Roster: Cash Technical Advisor

The IRC's Global Surge Team (GST) is a roster of esteemed and highly qualified humanitarian professionals who deploy on short notice to non-emergency and emergency contexts to support the IRC's mission. Members of the GST provide specialist support where talent is most needed for short-term deployments of up to three months. The GST is a flexible employment opportunity for staff, requiring members to be available for deployments only 50% of the year (with opportunities for additional deployments if incumbent is interested).

The Cash Technical Advisor (TA) will provide technical support in the design and development of cash and voucher assistance (CVA) activities as well as other ERD programs for the assigned countries/ regions to ensure the most appropriate, effective, and safe delivery of assistance for affected populations. The Cash Technical Advisor will also train colleagues on a range of CVA program approaches. Moreover, the position holder will lead or support selected global and country-led initiatives to extend scale and quality in line with IRC's strategic CVA goals. The selected candidate should also have familiarity with the operational aspects of CVA, including supply chain and finance; as well as with supporting social protection systems in fragile contexts.

The role will be directly supported by the Economic Recovery and Development Technical Unit at the IRC. The unit leads the IRC's cash and voucher assistance, rural & agricultural livelihoods, and enterprise and employment promotion programming, amongst other program models and research projects.

Specific Responsibilities

The Cash TA will spend at least 80% of their time delivering technical assistance in-person and remotely to country colleagues focused on CVA and ERD programming, CVA across all sectors as well as general economic program design, implementation and learning support. This is a primarily programs-focused position with the central responsibility concentrated on program quality. It is expected that the TA will travel approximately 40% of the total time to country programs to support program quality and capacity strengthening in person. This may also mean deployments in emergency response and may be on short notice. 20% of the work is spent on internal strategic work to improve scale and quality of cash programming globally, at the discretion of their supervisors. The Technical Advisors' specific responsibilities are as follows:

Ensure program quality:

Contribute to the design, development, and implementation of high-quality ERD programs and CVA activities within other sectors (such as health, education, protection, and governance):

• Support assessments on basic needs, food security, livelihoods, rapid market and labor markets, CVA feasibility, including financial services provider, and protection and gender-sensitive assessments.
• Ensure programs are in line with the IRC's key theories of change for ERD and CVA, adapted to the context, selecting interventions based on the best available evidence and the country program's Strategic Action Plan.
• Ensure programs are responsive to clients' needs and preferences, as well as incorporating strong components of promoting equality, inclusion, local partnership and Do No Harm.
• Provide inputs on the design of theories of change, monitoring plans and log frames, including indicator selection.
• Promote IRC's cash ambitions, including the use of digital payments, strong operational support systems, and alignment of CVA programs with social protection systems.
• Ensure sound analysis of context, capacity, and opportunities to input into country Strategy Action Plans (SAPs).

Engaging in business development to contribute to high quality concept notes and proposals:

• Review technical quality of ERD project proposals and other sectors' proposals with CVA and/or livelihoods components.
• Input into go / no go decisions on proposals and on budgets required for project delivery.
• During staffing gaps, write technical narratives of proposals and provide support on monitoring and evaluation aspects of ERD projects.
• When requested, engage with donors and do outreach in support of country programs.

Direct support to IRC country teams:

• Provide trainings based on needs, capacities and preferences of target group about subjects like basic and advanced cash programming, needs and markets analysis, protection mainstreaming, gender analysis etc., in person and remotely.
• Regularly exchange with country level program staff about ERD and other cash programming while providing expert advice and mentorship.
• Offer practical and timely advice to improve ERD and cash program quality and scale, overcoming obstacles, staying within IRC's best practices and policies etc.
• Support country teams to contextualize and adapt global resources.

Regional Cash focal point:

• Keep up to date with contextual analyses and crisis data in the assigned region, such as the IPC Food Insecurity data and other sector and country trends related to CVA and food insecurity.
• Share cross-context knowledge and learning across the assigned country teams and facilitate exchange between the teams.

Support or lead cash strategic projects to improve IRC global cash programming implementation, including operations:

• Work closely with other cash team members on relevant strategic projects centered around improving the IRC's ability to scale and implement high quality CVA programming.
• Lead the following in close coordination with the Supply Chain and Finance Teams of country programs:
  • Set up IRC's cash Standard Operating Procedures;
  • Support the contracting of new financial service providers;
  • Support electronic and paper voucher systems;
  • Improve other operational aspects of CVA.
• Participate in ongoing training courses and share knowledge and skill sets with other Technical Unit colleagues.

Key Working Relationships:

Position Reports to: Senior Technical Advisor - Cash & Markets

Internal: Close, regular relationships with country teams and regional colleagues; as well as with colleagues in the ERD Technical Unit. Regular communication with Technical Advisors from other Technical Units, such as education, protection, health, governance, research, evaluation and learning and gender equality technical unit teams. Interaction with IRC internal departments, including business development, procurement, and finance, external relations, and advocacy departments.

External: As requested, serve as IRC program representative in outside regional and global meetings, e.g. Cash focal point for Region, and forums with donors, online forums, other non-governmental organizations, inter-agency groups and foundations.

Job Qualifications:

Education: Master's/post-graduate degree in development, humanitarian affairs, economics, international relations or relevant field or equivalent combination of education and experience.

Work Experience:

• A minimum of 7 years implementing and/or managing cash-based humanitarian programming in diverse crisis or post-crisis settings.
• Experience providing technical support and guidance to a diverse team, including an ability to oversee staff in cross-cultural settings and at a distance.
• Experience in needs and markets assessments, design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of CVA programming to meet basic needs, incl. food security, NFIs etc. as well as technical tools and materials development.
• Experience in finance and supply chain procedures needed for CVA.
• Experience in livelihoods programming, such as income generating activities, employability, village savings and loans associations (VSLAs) etc.
• Experience aligning CVA with social protections systems.

Demonstrated Skills and Proficiencies:

• Knowledge of global trends in CVA
• Experience navigating the humanitarian system, including the humanitarian principles, cash working groups (country and regional) and global models for CVA delivery.
• Demonstrated assessment, data collection and analysis skills, including needs assessments, market assessments and incorporation of gender, age, and disability analysis into assessments.
• Experience with a wide range of delivery mechanisms for CVA (e.g. mobile money, bank transfers, direct cash etc.), including digital.
• Knowledge of guidelines of mayor institutional donors (e.g BHA, ECHO, GFFO, FCDO, Sida etc.).
• Proven track record in developing funding proposals and budgets for a range of donors.
• Demonstrated ability to work across departments, functions, and sectors to build strong working relationships with colleagues, and external partners.
• Strong program/technical, project design, planning, reporting, monitoring, and evaluation skills.
• Strong communication, influencing, support and training skills to serve IRC country teams well.
• Excellent social skills involving listening to, interacting with, and communicating clearly with people from diverse nationalities and backgrounds, and senior level internal and external partners, with a high degree of integrity.
• Working productively and proactively in remote team and management structures.
• If needed, flexibility to work adjusted hours, as appropriate to accommodate for different time zones.
• Demonstrated dedication to a Do No Harm approach, gender equality, diversity, and inclusion.
• Experience with remote and face-to-face training, facilitation and engagement tools, and familiarity with mobile monitoring tools.
• Strong analytical and conceptual skills, with the ability to think and plan strategically.
• A proven understanding of broader ERD programming e.g. resilience building, gender-sensitive rural livelihoods, employment and entrepreneurship promotion, VSLAs etc.

Language Skills: Fluency in English and at least one additional IRC language (Arabic, French or Spanish), more than one additional language is preferred.

Working Environment: Up to 40% travel is expected, Covid-19 restrictions permitting.

Equal Opportunity Employer: IRC is an Equal Opportunity Employer. IRC considers all applicants on the basis of merit without regard to race, sex, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.