Job description

ROLE PURPOSE: 

The Food Security, Livelihoods, and Social Protection Technical Advisor (TA) is a critical position for Save the Children in Lebanon and will play the lead role in ensuring the design, implementation and monitoring of high quality social protection, food security, livelihoods, and integrated nutrition programming for thousands of children and their families across the country. This role covers all thematic priorities under Save the Children’s global ambition to end Child Poverty.

The TA provides technical leadership to all our work in the sectors of Child Sensitive Social Protection and Basic Assistance, Food Security, Livelihoods, and Nutrition, with responsibility for developing clear strategic and operational plans, identifying fundraising needs and leading the development of technical proposals, forging strong partnerships with Government, UN, NGO and local civil society counterparts, as well as providing technical support to our implementing teams across three different field locations in Lebanon.

CHILD SAFEGUARDING: 

Level 3 - the post holder will have contact with children and/or young people either frequently (e.g. once a week or more) or intensively (e.g. four days in one month or more or overnight) because they work country programs; or are visiting country programs; or because they are responsible for implementing the police checking/vetting process staff.

SCOPE OF ROLE:

Reports to: Director of Program Development and Quality (DPDQ)

Dimensions: Save the Children Lebanon Country Office currently has a large portfolio of Social Protection, Food Security, Cash & Voucher Assistance (CVA) and Livelihoods work across the country, with a strong pipeline of future funding and opportunities to further expand given the complexity of the economic context of Lebanon and the growing focus on integrated cash plus and nutrition programming. 

Staff reporting to this post: None 

KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY:

Strategic Planning and Leadership

• Provide overall strategic leadership to Save the Children’s work in the Social Protection, Basic Need Assistance, CVA, Food Security, Livelihoods, and Nutrition sectors in Lebanon.
• Lead the development and rollout of these sector strategies for Save the Children in Lebanon, including cross cutting issues related to Nutrition within other sectors
• Provide technical input to the development of country annual plans, area plans, sector strategies and other planning documents.
• Maintain a clear overview of program progress across the sector portfolio to be shared with senior managers.
• Ensure integration of FSL and CVA with other sectors at program design level and within the developed tools and approached when relevant. 

Program Quality and Standards

• Provide technical expertise, quality assurance and support for Save the Children’s SP&FSL and CVA programs, ensuring they are of high quality with reliable data and outcomes. 
• Coordinate the development of technical capacity building resources and plans for SP&FSL staff, in Save the Children and our partners in Lebanon, working with field teams to prioritize training needs and resource these appropriately.
• Develop and implement capacity-building resources and plans on CVA for Save the Children technical advisors, operations teams, and partners in Lebanon. Work closely with the DPDQ and the Director of Operations to ensure the effective implementation of Save the Children's CVA procedures, standards, and framework.
• Develop and maintain central database of tools and guidance to support program quality and support the development of technical tools, guidance and documentation as required.
• Oversee knowledge sharing across FSL & SP teams and ensure that monitoring and evaluation results are understood and used to improve programs.
• Ensure FSL, SP and CVA programmes are designed and monitored to support children’s outcomes and integrated with other sectors and gender and disability inclusive, when appropriate.
• Manage the technical knowledge repository and supervise the virtual library of manuals and approaches per type of program, including tools and best practice documentation and evidence to improve and manage program quality.
• Ensure documentation of case studies and dissemination of these both internally and externally working with the Media and Advocacy team.
• Lead in technical assessments including Labor Market Assessments, Market System and Value Chain Analysis, CVA Situation and Response Analysis, Livelihoods Assessments, Household Economy Analysis, and other evidence generation.
• Participate in external workshops or research as needed, including the Integrated Poverty Classification Targeting exercise done at the national level. 

Programme Development and Resource Mobilisation

• Provide active leadership in Save the Children’s relationships with key donors for the Social Protection and Basic Assistance, Food Security, Livelihood, and Nutrition sectors
• Ensure clear identification of fundraising needs and priorities in these sectors
• Identify and assess appropriateness of fundraising opportunities.
• Lead technical development of high-quality proposals in line with strategic ambitions.
• Develop set of “off the shelf” concept notes for new or pilot activities.
• Lead donors and partner mapping for these sectors.

Technical Support to Programme Implementation

• Line-manage project components aimed at technical support to third parties at the national level, such as project implementing partners
• Lead the technical assessment, selection, and monitoring of SP&FSL and CVA implementing partners
• Support the development of monitoring, information management, and reporting systems that provide information for reporting and program improvement (in conjunction with Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) and field staff), such as Post-Distribution Monitoring and Quality Benchmarks
• Support high quality reporting by field staff through timely review and guidance.
• Screen technical field manager candidates (and others as appropriate) and support recruitment as needed.
• Assess (in conjunction with line management) and support technical work of Program Managers and sector focal points and support their professional development.
• Promote and facilitate synergies with other thematic programs
• As needed, lead in technical inputs to procurement of program goods or services involving multiple locations, large-scale use of resources, and/or a high level of risk to the agency to ensure program relevance, quality, adherence to technical guidelines, and efficient use of resources.
• Conduct regular field monitoring of activities
• Where external consultants (local or international) are required to technically support or monitor and evaluate projects, lead the recruitment and subsequent management of contracted consultants as per the recruitment guidelines and Terms of Reference.
• Analyze and provide feedback on program implementation to ensure gender equity, child participation, and child safeguarding.

Partnerships

• Ensure timely support to Partnerships manager on technical identification, selection, and adequate assessment of FSL&SP and CVA strategic & implementing partners, 
• Ensure appropriate, relevant, and timely provision of technical capacity development including through mobilization of internal and external opportunities and sharing of all relevant materials/documents, etc. 
• Promote joint program design for the advancement of mutual strategic priorities when relevant
• Commit to joint regular monitoring of implementation progress and achievement towards results, and feeding into programmatic adaptations
• Maintain strong coordinated working relationships with partners, including relevant government stakeholders such as MoSA and Ministry of Agriculture.
• Promote Save the Children policies and practice with respect to child protection, child safeguarding, code of conduct, health and safety, equal opportunities and other relevant policies and procedures with implementing partners 
• Improve/strengthen coordination and technical support to local partners including National NGOs, CSOs, and Governmental bodies on child protection. 
• Lead the identification of strategic partners for potential consortia projects.  

Advocacy and Representation

• Lead external representation of Save the Children’s Child Sensitive Social Protection and Basic Assistance, CVA, Food Security, Livelihood, and Nutrition work in Lebanon in front of government and other agencies.
• Represent Save the Children in technical forum and sector working groups in Lebanon, as: Cash Working Group, Livelihoods Sector Working Group and Nutrition WG.
• Serve as technical liaison with Save the Children Members, Regional Office, Global Team, FSL,SP and CVA Technical Working Groups, and other relevant fora within SCI.
• Represent SCI at the level of relevant governmental entities such as the Ministry of Social Affairs and the Ministry of Labor.
• Represent Save the Children on other national/international technical networks as requested.
• Contribute to development of advocacy messages and materials in the relevant sectors
• Support and respond to media requests in the relevant sectors 

General

• Comply with Save the Children policies and practice with respect to child safeguarding, anti-harassment, code of conduct, health and safety, equal opportunities and other relevant policies and procedures.

QUALIFICATIONS 

• Development professional with a relevant Masters’ Degree or equivalent professional experience. 
• Fluency in written and spoken Arabic and English

EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

Essential

• Minimum of 7 years’ experience in Food Security and Livelihoods programming and Cash & Voucher Assistance in humanitarian and developmental contexts in an NGO, UN or Government institution.
• Solid experience in designing, implementing and overseeing Food security and Livelihoods   programs, CVA and other market-based programming, in both humanitarian and development contexts; 
• Demonstrated experience in leading Food Security and Livelihoods Assessments, CVA Situation and Response Analysis.
• Understanding of employability programmes, labor market assessments, and market systems development, including value chain development.
• Knowledge of climate change adaptation and evidence-based approaches to designing and implementing food security and resilient livelihood programmes in vulnerable and crisis-affected contexts such as Lebanon.
• Understanding of Social Protection Policies and Programmes in Lebanon. 
• Demonstrated experience to represent organization in Technical Working groups, national or international coordination forum. 
• Ability to link micro-level impacts on children with macro trends at national and regional level in employment and livelihoods;
• Demonstrated experience in leading successful proposals in the area of FSL, CVA and/or SP with international donors as ECHO, FCDO, USAID, UN etc. 
• Experience of solving complex issues through analysis, capacity to communicate path of action and ensure the commitment of stakeholders; excellent coordination and interpersonal skills with the ability to communicate and negotiate clearly and effectively at all levels;
• Strong results orientation, with the ability to challenge existing mindsets;
• Highly developed cultural awareness and ability to work well in an international environment with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures;
• Ability and willingness to dramatically change work practices and hours, and work with incoming emergency surge teams. Proven ability to work in insecure or hardship environments and to work under tight deadlines;
• Ability and willingness to travel extensively to field sites and work independently;
• Previous Work experience in Lebanon
• Commitment to Save the Children values, including willingness to abide by and enforce the Child Safeguarding policy.

Desirable

• Previous work experience in other Middle East countries;
• Experience in the specific frameworks of Household Economy Approach (HEA), Cost of Diet (CoD), Integrated Food Security Phased Classification (IPC), Emergency Markets Mapping and Assessment (EMMA), Rapid Market Assessment (RAM) and/or Minimum Economic Recovery Standards (MERS).
• Experience in leading Labour Market analysis and youth employability Programmes.
• Experience in climate resilience livelihoods and/or agricultural based livelihoods 
• Experience in designing and implementing cash plus programming for nutrition and/or protection and/or education outcomes 
• Experience in designing and implementing Child Sensitive Social Protection programming.

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.

FRAUD PREVENTION:

The role holder is expected to uphold high standards of integrity and transparency, and will have access to financial, operational, or programmatic resources that require strict compliance with SCI’s Anti-Fraud and Corruption Policy. This includes responsibility for preventing, identifying, and reporting any suspected fraud, corruption, or misuse of resources in the course of their work.

SAFEGUARDING OUR STAFF:

The post holder is required to carry out the duties in accordance with the SCI anti-harassment policy.

HEALTH AND SAFETY:

The role holder is required to carry out the duties in accordance with SCI Health and Safety policies and procedures.