Climate Programme Design Expert – French Speaking

The Climate Programme Design Expert will assist in the design of various climate adaptation, mitigation and carbon drawdown programmes both for Seefar and it’s donors. This role has the opportunity to impact a wide range of communities and contexts and will enact our bias towards action and impact. This is a remote consulting role so you can live wherever you like, post-Covid travel may be required and you must be fluent in both French and English.

Job Description

We are a social enterprise with a vision for a world where vulnerable people have more opportunities to advance themselves. We work with some of the most vulnerable populations whose situations are impacted more and more by climate change. Climate change has become a hidden driver of migration, human trafficking, displacement, extremism and social exclusion in many contexts, as well as being one of humanity’s greatest challenges in its own right. We work in East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, East Africa, North Africa, the Sahel and Europe. For more information about us, please visit http://seefar.org/about-us

This role demands someone who is smart, intrinsically motivated, worldly and interested in hard challenges. Seefar has a bias towards action and impact and you should share this instinct.

We receive funding from the German, British, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Austrian and Australian governments; from international organisations such as the United Nations and World Bank; from the European Union; and from foundations and philanthropy to tackle some of the most difficult problems in the developing world.

We have just launched our new Accelerating Carbon Drawdown programme that is designed to tackle the drivers of climate change using solutions backed by scientific consensus. This role would support the design, delivery and growth of this programme as well as work with donors to assess and design bespoke programmes.

Responsibilities

The following are the primary responsibilities of the role, with estimated allocations of time and attention.

Deliver: Project and Mission Implementation

Approximately 90% of your time and attention:

• Conduct programme assessment and design missions for Seefar and our donors.
• Assess the viability of project and programme proposals from partners in order for Seefar to select the best projects for funding. This will likely include the assessment of the scientific evidence of proposals.
• Working with partners in co-design processes to improve funding proposals.
• Ensuring new initiatives in particular have monitoring, learning and evaluation mechanisms that allow robust impact assessments to be made.
• Ensure donors needs are met and expectations exceeded where possible. For example, this would include drafting updates and insight reports for donors; or working with our research team to understand the impact of the programme portfolio.
• Provide technical inputs to climate programming.
• Liaise with donors and partners to report on projects and manage relationships. For example, this would include briefing donors on progress and spending time talking with relevant teams in our partner organisations.

Develop: Capabilities and Program Portfolio

Approximately 10% of your time and attention:

• Contribute to fundraising including building and maintaining contacts and networks with potential supporters.
• Strengthen Seefar’s reputation and profile in our areas of expertise, potentially including demonstration projects if you assess them to be valuable. For example, this might include designing Seefar-funded pilots to test new approaches; or disseminating novel research to develop programme branding.
• Test and learn from the project portfolio in order to develop Seefar’s comparative advantages. For example, this would require innovative approaches to measuring and communicating results from projects.

Direct: Global Management

• Represent and demonstrate Seefar’s values.
• Cooperate with other areas of Seefar, including to communicate substantive and administrative information that supports corporate management overall. For example, this would include ensuring effective internal reporting at the project and program level on security and justice. Or internal procedures relating to security and safety of personnel.

Working with Seefar

Current and former personnel have noted the points below as positive features of Seefar’s work environment and culture:

• Seefar combines entrepreneurialism with a focus on social impact.
• You work with highly diverse people and across a diversity of contexts.
• There is a high level of trust that supports you to work autonomously.
• The people at Seefar encourage innovation and experimentation.
• Achieving results is prioritised over rigid structures and workflows.
• You are never bored and always challenged.

Current and former personnel have noted the points below as negative features of Seefar’s work environment and culture:

• Collaborating with geographically dispersed teams requires flexibility and patience.
• Working remotely can make you feel isolated and so requires you to invest time in communication.
• Travel schedules can sometimes be heavy (outside of Covid times).
• A high-growth phase means problem-solving as Seefar’s systems evolve quickly.

An Excellent Candidate

To excel in this role, you will have the following experience and capacities:

• You adapt to changes in your project or job, staying productive and keeping focused on goals.
• More than 5 years of experience working on climate change and/or environmental issues.
• You have completed consulting work that was assessed positively.
• You have the objectivity and skillset to assess climate science.
• You have ideas about what works well in this industry and you have seen opportunities to do much better.
• You will be motivated by a performance framework focused on social impact.