Regional Head of Humanitarian – West and Central Africa (WCA)

ROLE PURPOSE:

The primary purpose of the Regional Head of Humanitarian is to provide support to Country Offices (COs) on Humanitarian Preparedness and Response against Save the Children’s quality benchmarks and policies. S/he also provides advice on all programmatic and operational aspects of humanitarian affairs across the West & Central Africa (WCA) region.

S/he supports COs in ensuring humanitarian activities are effective and efficient, and meet goals and objectives of Save the Children, its donors, and the needs of affected populations, and/or red flag issues to his/her line manager. S/he ensures the Save the Children COs are adequately prepared to respond to new emergencies and plays an important role in humanitarian coordination at regional level.

The post holder plays a strategic role in supporting COs in effective scale-up and management of Save the Children humanitarian programmes to increase impact and enable positive change for children. This includes working closely with Regional Operations Managers, Operations Backstops as well as the Humanitarian focal points and/or Directors of Programme Operations within COs to secure additional resources and support through Members and Centre.

SCOPE OF ROLE:

Reports to: Regional Programme Operations Director

Staff reporting to this post:

Direct: Regional Strategic Analyst (CAFU), Regional Humanitarian Capacity Building Manager, Regional Humanitarian Coordinator

Indirect : Operations Backstops for WCA and Humanitarian focal points in COs

Budget Responsibilities: 300,000 USD per year

Role Dimensions: The Regional Head of Humanitarian is part of the Regional Programme Operations Team of Save the Children’s West & Central Africa Regional Office. The Regional Head of Humanitarian ensures overall management of the Regional Humanitarian Function. S/he provides adequate support to CO teams based on SC humanitarian standards and quality benchmarks, promotes collaborative cross-functional dynamics with stakeholders at different levels (Country Offices, Regional Office, Centre, Members, Response Backstops, and Emergency Health Unit) towards common objectives in order to maximize the impact of our humanitarian response programme delivery and external strategic positioning.

KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY :

• Enhance preparedness and humanitarian capacity to respond according to SC humanitarian quality benchmark:
• Support COs to finalise the review of their Humanitarian Strategic Planning and positioning as well as their Emergency Preparedness Plan (EPP).
• Actively participate to the internal coordination meetings and calls (REMG calls, member update calls, monthly RO Ops calls, humanitarian follow up calls, weekly Humanitarian Team meetings, etc…).
• Ensure compliance of humanitarian responses with Save the Children’s humanitarian standards, policies and procedures, as well as donor regulations, agreements, and SPHERE guidelines.
• Support to Human Resources teams to the set-up of a surge platform at both regional and country levels by strengthening  response capability and functionality of Emergency Response Teams across WCA.
• Coordinate with Operation Response Backstops, different functions at RO and Humanitarian focal points in COs to support the optimal implementation and management of emergency responses including the review and feedback on the humanitarian monthly deliverables (SitReps, Snapshots, Response Updates), resource mobilisation for the response (Seed Funding and GHSP requests) and monitoring of the evolution of the context for potential activation of SC humanitarian procedures (alerts).
• Contribute to the capitalisation of SC humanitarian relevant information and promote information sharing and lessons learned about responses across WCA region using the internal information-sharing platform (WCA Humanitarian Community of Practice).
• Ensure gap filling for humanitarian focal points in-country for COs with active responses when needed
• Ensure response support and supervision on the field
• Response backstopping support to small scale responses (depending on availability) CO teams to perform appropriately and effectively in humanitarian responses according to SC humanitarian standards including the production and sharing of key deliveries.
• Provide support to CSG Director in WCA by contributing to reporting and monitoring potential CSG cases from active responses across the region.
• Ensure general management of humanitarian function at WCA:
• Management of Regional Strategic Analyst (CAFU WCA focal point), Regional Humanitarian Capacity Building Programme Manager and Regional Humanitarian Coordinator.
• Budget management of WCA Humanitarian Pool Fund.
• Increase WCA humanitarian positioning by producing and contributing to in-depth regional strategic analyses.
• Advocate with larger SCA to diversify the source of contributions into the WCA Humanitarian Pooled Fund in order to have a better oversight and mainstream different supports from the larger membership towards Humanitarian and Preparedness across WCA region.
• Ensure humanitarian induction of new SC staff in the region.
• Visibility, Positioning and Humanitarian Leadership:
• Represents Save the Children on relevant external Humanitarian platforms at regional level. EiE WG, Regional WG meetings and IASC, donors meetings when needed and or upon line manager request.
• Participation and representing WCA humanitarian function in SC internal global humanitarian coordination forums (HCBG, Surge platform, GEiHS, HART, HCP,…)
• Contribute to the capitalization, updating and sharing of information on the humanitarian coordination of the SCI teams at both the country and regional level.
• Provide in-depth analyses of humanitarian strategic positioning of SC across WCA region.
• Contribute to  the visibility of SC and support when needed the Advocacy / Comms team to produce analytical reports on humanitarian positioning in WCA region.
• Promote experience and learning exchanges to harmonise consistency of SC quality response delivery globally:
• Coordination with SCA key humanitarian stakeholders (Country Offices Response Teams, Centre and Members) for enhancing humanitarian response quality programme delivery and strategic positioning.
• Participation into discussions and reflections about the review of SC humanitarian procedures and policies in line with our global humanitarian ambition.
• Reinforcing inter-regional humanitarian coordination opportunities in order to promote experience and learning exchanges to harmonize consistency of SC quality response delivery and mainstreaming global efforts for common purposes.
• Enhance humanitarian competencies and capacities of SC response teams in response management, strategic thinking and preparedness by participating as mentor, coach and facilitator in different humanitarian capacity building initiatives.

BEHAVIOURS (Values in Practice)

Accountability:

• Holds self accountable for making decisions, managing resources efficiently, achieving and role modelling Save the Children values
• Holds the team and partners accountable to deliver on their responsibilities – giving them the freedom to deliver in the best way they see fit, providing the necessary development to improve performance and applying appropriate consequences when results are not achieved.

Ambition:

• sets ambitious and challenging goals for themselves and their team,
• takes responsibility for their own personal development and encourages their team to do the same
• widely shares their personal vision for Save the Children, engages and motivates others
• future orientated, thinks strategically and on a global scale.

Collaboration:

• Builds and maintains effective relationships, with their team, colleagues, Members and external partners and supporters
• Values diversity, sees it as a source of competitive strength
• Approachable, good listener, easy to talk to.

Creativity:

• develops and encourages new and innovative solutions
• willing to take disciplined risks.

Integrity:

• honest, encourages openness and transparency; demonstrates highest levels of integrity

QUALIFICATIONS 

• MA / MSc level in International Cooperation/Humanitarian Aid, a relevant subject or equivalent field experience
• Fluency in written and spoken English and French.
• Computer literate in Microsoft word, excel etc.

EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

Essential

• Minimum 5 years of proven experience in planning, coordination and management, preferably in the INGO sector and / or in an international environment
• Previous experience of humanitarian programme management, preparedness and response in volatile contexts
• Experience working in a regional and/or country office with preference in the WCA region
• Experience of managing multi-donor, multi-site programmes
• Experience in developing and delivering training, as well as mentoring and coaching.
• Excellent communication skills
• Proven ability to influence change at an operational and strategic level
• Politically and culturally sensitive with qualities of patience, tact and diplomacy
• The capacity and willingness to be extremely flexible and accommodating in difficult and sometimes insecure working circumstances.
• Commitment to and understanding of SCI’s aims, values and principles.

Desireable

• Solid networking experience
• Humanitarian leadership experience in conflict zones

Additional job responsibilities

• The duties and responsibilities as set out above are not exhaustive and the role holder may be required to carry out additional duties within reasonableness of their level of skills and experience.
• Equal Opportunities
• The role holder is required to carry out the duties in accordance with the SCI Equal Opportunities and Diversity policies and procedures.
• Child Safeguarding:
• We need to keep children safe so our selection process, which includes rigorous background checks, reflects our commitment to the protection of children from abuse.
• Health and Safety
• The role holder is required to carry out the duties in accordance with SCI Health and Safety policies and procedures.