Deployable Education in Emergencies Specialist at Plan International

Plan International is an independent development and humanitarian non-profit organisation that advances children’s rights and equality for girls. We support children’s rights from birth until they reach adulthood, and enable children to prepare for - and respond to - crises and adversity. We believe in the power and potential of every child, but know this is often suppressed by poverty, violence, exclusion and discrimination.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Deployable Education in Emergencies Specialist

Location: Deployed 75% of the time to Plan International’s country programmes. Home-based when not deployed
Reports to: Education in Emergencies Technical Lead
Functional Area: Global Humanitarian Team
Grade: 4
Effective Date: February 2023

Role Purpose

• In response to an emergency, Plan International Country Offices often require additional experts to support their response and help those affected by crises. Plan International’s core surge team is composed of technical global experts who can deploy to emergency responses within 72 hours. Deployments are generally for 2-3 months but in some cases can extend to 4 months. The post holder will be expected to provide leadership to their area of technical specialism to support the country team they are deployed to.
• Core surge team members are globally roving and work away from their home base, from a few weeks up to four months per assignment. Core surge is typically deployed to country programmes for up to nine months a year (pro rata for part-time posts).
• The Deployable Education in Emergencies (EiE) Specialist is a member of Plan International’s Global Hub Education in Emergencies team. While on deployment the specialist provides technical support to Plan International’s Country Offices (COs). This normally involves responding to medium and large-scale emergencies to develop, implement, monitor and evaluate EiE programmes.

Accountabilities
Accountabilities during deployed time:
Programme Design and Assessment (15%):

• Ensure all work has a strong child protection, gender and inclusion focus, in line with Plan International’s Global Strategy.
• Lead on multi-sectoral needs assessments, coordinating with Plan International’s other programmatic areas (for example, Child Protection), the Education Cluster/working group, education authorities, teachers and community members including children and young people in all their diversity, ensuring assessment findings are documented and disseminated.
• Support Plan International’s COs during emergencies on assessment of education and protection needs, gender analysis and the design and evaluation of programmes, maximising community participation and ensuring a portfolio of high-quality, conflict sensitive EiE programming globally.
• Provide technical assistance to COs in the formulation of gender-aware (or better) and inclusive EiE programme strategies, plans and proposals that are developed in collaboration with education authorities, that strengthen community capacity and support participation, particularly of adolescents.
• Ensure that EiE interventions are linked to longer-term programming and national education plans and systems.
• Support Plan International COs in the development of preparedness and disaster risk reduction plans for education.

Programme Implementation (35%):

• The post holder will deploy to COs to provide technical support and leadership on safe, inclusive and quality education programmes during humanitarian crises.
• Coordinate with education, early childhood development (ECD), child protection, gender advisors and other staff to ensure coherence with Plan International’s Inclusive Quality Education framework and to build synergy with existing skills and training.
• Work with the key emergency and development staff focused on: Inclusive Quality Education (any longer term education work complementing education in emergency programming), ECD, child protection, gender, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), Water and Sanitation/Hygiene Promotion (WASH), Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA), Food Security and Livelihoods (FSL), to support integrated programming that reduces protection risks and multi-dimensional barriers to education, and through a strong focus on learning environments that promote social and emotional learning and psychosocial support, supporting the wellbeing of children and young people in all their diversity.
• Ensure alignment of Plan International’s EiE work with key cross cutting priorities (for example, child protection, gender and inclusion) whilst also ensuring innovation is central to our approach.
• Ensure the effective planning, implementation and coordination of education programming, to support access, retention and positive transition through different levels of accredited formal and non-formal education, including strategies that support referral and cross-sectoral service delivery.
• Contribute to the development of gender-balanced staffing plans to implement EiE programme activities and work with the Human Resources (HR) team to recruit in line with approved grants.
• Ensure that EiE interventions are aligned with the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies Minimum Standards (INEE MS) and related resources, and other global humanitarian standards, guidelines and tools.
• Identify EiE programme supply needs and coordinate with the logistics team to ensure timely procurement and delivery.

Representation and Partnership (10%):

• Work with country office colleagues to represent Plan International at relevant clusters, working groups, and in other fora related to EiE and facilitate coordination across sectors.
• Participate in the development of the Education Cluster/Working Group response strategies, including the Humanitarian Response Plan, Humanitarian Needs Overview and Rapid Response Plan processes, ensuring a focus on gender and inclusion.
• Identify opportunities and establish dialogue for partnerships and collaboration with other humanitarian agencies and education stakeholders, particularly local partners, representatives of people living with disabilities (DPOs), women’s and youth groups, education authorities, vocational and tertiary education institutions and teaching unions.
• Support the development of Plan International’s profile in EiE programming, particularly in regard to girls and young women in all their diversity.

Resource Mobilization (10%):

• Build and maintain relationships with relevant government departments, UN agencies and NGOs.
• Establish/maintain new/existing relationships with key donors.
• Support Plan International’s COs to build a diversified portfolio of funding for EiE.
• Support development and submission of quality proposals in response to identified opportunities at CO level and in collaboration with local partners.
• Programme Monitoring and Evaluation, Reporting and Accountability (10 %)
• Work closely with the Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) team in COs to analyse assessments and develop an EiE M&E framework that appropriately monitors the evolving needs of learners and teachers and aligns with the Education Cluster/working group response strategies.
• Build capacity of EiE and M&E staff to collect and analyse quantitative and qualitative data, ensuring all data is disaggregated by sex, age and disability.
• Document and disseminate key learning from EiE responses and use assessments, evaluations and lessons learned to redefine response strategies and EiE interventions, in coordination with the Education Cluster/working group, education authorities, teachers and members of the community, including children and young people in all their diversity.
• Prepare timely reports on EiE projects in compliance with internal and donor requirements.
• Provide input for regular CO sitreps.
• Ensure accountability activities effectively and efficiently support community members, including teachers and children and young people in all their diversity and that feedback from all relevant stakeholders is considered throughout all phases of the response.

Learning and Capacity Building (10%):

• Develop capacity building plans and tools for CO colleagues, or support the implementation of existing plans.
• Support the provision of training, coaching and mentorship to programme colleagues, partners and other key stakeholders on EiE and related issues such as gender equality and inclusion to build capacity to support safe, effective teaching, wellbeing and learning. Identify and if necessary develop training manuals, guidance documents, and toolkits on key education and ECD in emergencies issues, as required.
• Promote the application of best practices in EiE both internally and externally.

Research, Policy and Advocacy (10%):

• Drive learning, knowledge management and policy impact by authoring, commissioning and contributing to publications, policy documents, briefing notes and other resource materials ensuring that Plan International has distinct knowledge and evidence on gender in emergencies. Support COs to develop case studies and reports of programme innovation and successes.
• Engage with key technical groups within Plan International, representing EiE.
• Contribute to relevant global advocacy and policy objectives with documented learning and evidence.
• Work with the Education Cluster/working group to develop advocacy strategies informed by contextually relevant evidence and analysis to influence national-level plans, programmes and policies.

Safeguarding:

• Ensures that Plan International’s global policies for Child Protection (CPP) and Gender Equality and Inclusion (GEI) are fully embedded in accordance with the principles and requirements of the policy including relevant Implementation Standards and Guidelines as applicable to their area of responsibility. This includes, but is not limited to, ensuring staff and associates are aware of and understand their responsibilities under these policies and Plan International’s Code of Conduct (CoC), their relevance to their area of work, and that concerns are reported and managed in accordance with the appropriate procedures.

Key Relationships:
Internal

• Country office team
• Implementing partner organisations.
• Plan International National Organisations
• Global Hub Humanitarian Team
• Other Global Hub departments

External:

• UN agencies
• In-country institutional donors
• Peer agencies.
• Coordination mechanisms

Technical Expertise, Skills Aknowledge
Essential:

• University Degree or equivalent in education or related fields.
• Able and willing to deploy at short notice to humanitarian crises.
• Significant experience in the planning, design and implementation of integrated, conflict sensitive, gender-aware (or better) education programmes, including in humanitarian settings, that link to contextually relevant, long-term development frameworks.

Technical expertise should include:

• Knowledge and understanding of key issues relevant to education, particularly in emergency contexts: resilience, Disaster Risk Reduction, the Sustainable Development Goals and related development frameworks, diversity, gender equality and rights-based approaches.
• Knowledge of child protection principles, child safeguarding, and familiarity with referral systems.
• Good knowledge of INEE Minimum Standards and related resources, and other humanitarian standards (including the Core Humanitarian Standard and Child Protection Minimum Standards)
• Experience of conducting education needs assessments and M&E activities and an understanding of Sex Age and Disability Disaggregated Data (SADDD), Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP) and child/youth participation.
• Experience with advocacy, particularly influencing around girls’ education, inclusion and education continuity in crisis contexts.
• Experience of working in a range of humanitarian contexts (e.g. refugee, conflict, rapid onset), including with the Education Cluster and cross-sectoral and education authority collaboration.
• Experience of capacity building and mentoring on education technical areas with a variety of audiences, and the ability to work comfortably with ethnically diverse colleagues in sensitive environments.
• Ability to secure funding from public and private funding streams; excellent skills in writing funding submissions and donor reports
• Excellent negotiation and representation skills
• Fluency in English & ideally French, written and spoken.
• Strong team management, staff capacity building and motivation skills in teamwork and networking.

Desirable:

• Fluency in French, Spanish, Arabic or any other languages
• Significant network with other organisations involved in this field.
• Plan International’s Values In Practice
• We are open and accountable
• Promotes a culture of openness and transparency, including with sponsors and donors.
• Holds self and others accountable to achieve the highest standards of integrity.
• Consistent and fair in the treatment of people.
• Open about mistakes and keen to learn from them.
• Accountable for ensuring we are a safe organisation for all children, girls & young people
• We strive for lasting impact:
• Articulates a clear purpose for staff and sets high expectations.
• Creates a climate of continuous improvement, open to challenge and new ideas.
• Focuses resources to drive change and maximise long-term impact, responsive to changed priorities or crises.
• Evidence-based and evaluates effectiveness.

We work well Together:

• Seeks constructive outcomes, listens to others, willing to compromise when appropriate.
• Builds constructive relationships across Plan International to support our shared goals.
• Develops trusting and ‘win-win’ relationships with funders, partners and communities.
• Engages and works well with others outside the organization to build a better world for girls and all children.

We are inclusive and Empowering:

• Seeks constructive outcomes, listens to others, willing to compromise when appropriate.
• Builds constructive relationships across Plan International to support our shared goals.
• Develops trusting and ‘win-win’ relationships with funders, partners and communities.
• Engages and works well with others outside the organization to build a better world for girls and all children.

Physical Environment:

• As part of the core surge team, the primary purpose of the role is to deploy to emergencies globally. The post holder will deploy to a diverse range of countries and contexts. This can range from insecure environments to countries that have just been impacted by a rapid-onset disaster.
• The post holder will be provided with the necessary support for such varied locations, including security training, well-being and mental health support and briefings before all deployments.
• While on deployment, the accommodation, transport, and availability of services will be dependent on the context and the specific country offices policies.

Level of Contact with Children:

• High

Salary

• We will be happy to disclose the salary and applicable benefits to applicants as part of this process, however, please kindly note that the salary and employment benefits will be set according to your location and therefore it is not possible to include full details here. 

Application Closing Date
Monday, 8th May, 2023.

Method of Application
Interested and qualified candidates should:
Click here to apply online

Note

• Equality, diversity and inclusion is at the very heart of everything that Plan International stands for.
• We want Plan International to reflect the diversity of the communities we work with, offering equal opportunities to everyone regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.
• Plan International is based on a culture of inclusivity and we strive to create a workplace environment that ensures every team, in every office, in every country, is rich in diverse people, thoughts, and ideas.
• We foster an organisational culture that embraces our commitment to racial justice, gender equality, girls’ rights and inclusion.
• Plan International believes that in a world where children face so many threats of harm, it is our duty to ensure that we, as an organisation, do everything we can to keep children safe.
• This means that we have particular responsibilities to children that we come into contact with and we must not contribute in any way to harming or placing children at risk.
• A range of pre-employment checks will be undertaken in conformity with Plan International's Safeguarding Children and Young People policy. Plan International also participates in the Inter Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. 
• In line with this scheme we will request information from applicants previous employers about any findings of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and/or sexual harassment during employment, or incidents under investigation when the applicant left employment.
• By submitting an application, the job applicant confirms their understanding of these recruitment procedures.
• Please note that Plan International will never send unsolicited emails requesting payment from candidates.