Disaster Risk Financing Advisor

Contract Duration: 2 years with possibility of extension

Salary Range : 32,725 -38,500

Hours Per Week: 35

Save the Children UK has an exciting opportunity for a collaborative and influential individual with Project and Award Management skills and experience to join us as our Disaster Risk Financing Advisor in The Start Network within our Humanitarian team to directly support the development and piloting of new anticipation and risk financing solutions and approaches for humanitarian action.

About Us

Save the Children UK believes every child deserves a future. In the UK and around the world, we work every day to give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. When crisis strikes, and children are most vulnerable, we are always among the first to respond and the last to leave. We ensure children’s unique needs are met and their voices are heard. We deliver lasting results for millions of children, including those hardest to reach.

About the Team

The Start Network was incubated by SCUK over the last 10-years and became an independent entity comprised of multiple humanitarian agencies and an operational team referred to as the Start Platform, in May 2019. The Start Network is made up of more than 80 aid agencies, of which Save the Children is one, working across five continents, ranging from large international organisations to national NGOs. The aim of the Start Network is to deliver more effective emergency aid, harnessing the power and knowledge of the network to make faster and better decisions to help people affected by crises. It advocates for radical change to the system so that the world can better deal with the humanitarian challenges of today and in the future.

The Start Platform maintains a strong relationship with Save the Children as the grant custodian of many of the Start Network’s programmes. The Start Crisis Anticipation and Risk Financing Team is managed within Save the Children’s Humanitarian Business Transformation Team but sits with the wider Start Programmes team (SCUK dedicated grant custodian team) and works closely with colleagues in the Start Platform.

About the role

As the Disaster Risk Financing Advisor you will directly support the development and piloting of identified new anticipation and risk financing solutions and approaches for humanitarian action. You will work within the Operations team of the Anticipation and Risk Finance team with strong linkages to the technical colleagues, NGO working groups and external partners as well as relevant teams in Start Network.

You will have direct links to colleagues in countries and regions where operational frameworks are in place to further the growth and adaptation of the Start Network’s risk financing and anticipation systems, including for example; Pakistan, Philippines and Bangladesh and potentially other countries in Start Network’s current and future portfolio**.**

In this role, you will:

Project management of national/hub Anticipation and Risk Financing Schemes

• Be accountable for supporting Start Network members to develop complex and innovative disaster risk financing initiatives; to design and implement activity workplans, ensuring financial management, donor reporting and effective risk and awards management.
• Support of country level Crisis Financing Advisors related to the work of the Start Network risk financing projects to ensure local activities are implemented in line with agreed timeframes and budgets
• Be accountable for supporting Start Network members to set-up and manage anticipation and risk finance systems, including developing standard operating procedures, governance groups and connecting them to relevant technical capacity.
• To be the focal point for in country / hub teams, fielding requests for anticipation and risk financing support to relevant colleagues.
• Be responsible for the design and implementation of financial flows between donors, Start Network, members and partners (including managing sub-grant agreements)
• Support the collaboration infrastructure that underpins the anticipation and risk finance country pilots including hosting agreements, collaboration protocols and links to wider hub development work.
• Contribute to the development of collaborative tools to underpin the launch of disaster risk financing systems, applying creative thinking, borrowing learning from other Start Network workstreams and working with design groups to adapt them effectively to different contexts
• Contribute to facilitating understanding of risk financing pilots and approaches, and opportunities for participation in co-design, amongst wider Start Network members and other forums in the humanitarian sector.

Create Space for the Legitimacy of NGOs in the Risk Financing Sector

• Contribute to building strong internal and external communication tools keep members and stakeholders informed of progress and learning on various Start anticipation and risk financing initiatives

Mobilise resources to actively experiment with disaster risk financing

• Ensure the use of relevant communication tools through presentations, delivery of trainings at global and country level, publications of relevant papers

About you

To be successful, it is important that you have:

• Experience of managing and/or coordinating humanitarian or international development projects/programmes
• Strong Project and Award Management skills
• Strong Financial management skills with significant experience with proposal writing, budgeting, forecasting
• Experience in a humanitarian context and programming tools
• Experience of managing and building effective partnerships
• A flexible and initiative-taking attitude with the ability to work autonomously with an unpredictable workload in a ‘start-up’ type of work environment
• Experience of remote management of colleagues
• Commitment to Save the Children’s vision, mission and values.

Closing Date: We will be reviewing applications and conducting interviews and assessments on a rolling basis. We are aiming to conduct interviews before Christmas on the 21st December via Microsoft Teams.

Please note:

To avoid disappointment, you are advised to submit your application as soon as possible as we reserve the right to close the vacancy early if a high volume of applications are received. This is to ensure that we can manage application levels whilst maintaining a positive candidate experience. Unfortunately once a vacancy has closed, we are unable to consider further applications.

To learn more about the position, please review the Job Description in the attached Documents.

What we offer you:

Working for a charity provides one of the best benefits there is – a sense of purpose and reward for helping others. However, we understand the importance of giving back to our employees to ensure a happy and healthy working environment and work/life balance.

• We focus on flexibility, inclusion, collaboration, health and wellbeing both in and outside of work.
• We provide a wide range of benefits which will reward your hard work, motivate you, and inspire you to work to improve the lives of children every day. You can read more about our benefits here.

Ways of Working:

Remote First – The majority of our roles can be performed remotely, however you may work from the office as often as you wish. Whilst you will be predominantly working from home, we may at times require you to come to your contracted office (up to 2-4 days per month or 6-8 days per quarter). Note: This will be agreed with your Line Manager and team. This is intended to be time spent on collaborating with colleagues and relationship building.

On-site – There are certain roles that cannot be performed remotely and so your role will be based in an office location and you may occasionally be able to work from home.

Flexible Working – We are happy to discuss flexible working options at interview**.**

Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion:

Save the Children UK believes in a world that is fair, inclusive and equitable where all children have the opportunity to change their world. We apply this to our workforce and we are committed to developing and supporting a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organisation where all employees have a sense of belonging and feel that they can be “Free to Be Me”. We are not looking for just one type of person – we want to recruit people who can add fresh perspectives, innovative ideas or challenge that disrupts the risk of group think.

We are especially interested in people whose childhood experiences – of life on a low income, of migration, of being in a racialised community, of the care system, of being LGBT+ or in an LGBT+ family or living with (or with someone with) a disability – help us to see things we might otherwise miss. Whatever your story is we want to hear it because we know that different voices, ideas, perspectives and knowledge, working together will enable us to better the lives of children around the world. This is the reason why we are all here.