Specialist, Disaster Response and Risk Reduction (DR3) | Asia Pacific
This is a local position and will be based in Metro Manila, Philippines. Candidates must be currently eligible to work in the country without sponsorship. The successful candidate will be offered an initial contract of 2 years that is subject to renewal depending on the availability of the funds, and a local country-based compensation package.
The work arrangement for this position is hybrid, and flex-time schedule.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
Disaster Response
Support Habitat National Offices in responding to humanitarian or emergency situations
- Participate in shelter cluster coordination, donor, and government meetings during emergency response.
- Provide direction, leadership and backstop support for the development, oversight, and management of disaster response interventions.
- Support the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of disaster response programs.
- Facilitates the communications, conduct assessments, supports conceptualization and design of disaster response interventions in collaboration with Headquarters (HQ), other Area Offices (AOs), National Organizations (NOs), Branch Offices and Partners on disaster response program developments and monitoring.
- Be readily available for deployments in the event of an emergency situation to respond to disasters at a branch or national office in the region within 24 hours.
Disaster Preparedness
Support the capacity building of HFH affiliated entities to implement disaster response programs
- Ensure effective, practical, field operations plan which will facilitate country specific disaster responses are integrated and addressed in country DR³ Plans and country strategic, contingency and management plans.
- Design, promote, facilitate and participate in disaster response (rapid response) training activities.
- Assist the NO’s in the prepositioning of shelter kits and provide guidance to define a minimum standard kit.
- Promote the use of cash voucher assistance (CVA) and provide capacity strengthening initiatives.
- Engage in partnership cultivation and development for activation in response to disasters within Asia Pacific (AP).
- Support collaborative resource development for disaster response initiatives within AP particularly those related to the AP DR³ Reserve Fund.
- Engage and support in the development of industry-wide position papers, best practice documents and standards on behalf of HFHI-AP and HFHI in relation to disaster response.
- Contribute to the timely and appropriate use of the AP DR³ Portal.
- Manage the AP Rapid Response Roster (member recruitment, database maintenance, members’ capacity building monitoring) in collaboration with AP HR.
- Contribute in the HFHI Global DR³ Community of Practice when required.
- Participate in and help create opportunities for on-going interactions between DR³ SMEs throughout AP region.
Disaster Risk Reduction and Adaptation
- Build capacity of HFHI and HFH affiliated entities to design, monitor and implement disaster risk reduction and mitigation strategies and programs.
- Works closely with HQ, NOs, Branch Offices and Partners to conduct assessments in support of conceptualization and design of appropriate disaster risk reduction and mitigation regional and country strategies and program interventions;
- Facilitate the development of DRR and mitigation intervention in collaboration program team in line with AP and country strategic business plan ensuring that it is within external standards in community resilience programming, with emphasis on international standards, such as SPHERE, IASC, Core Humanitarian Standards, ALNAP etc.
- Provide technical advice on resilience-building in disaster prone contexts.
- Supports the development of systems, standard operation procedures (SOPs), terms of reference (TOR) and guidelines to enhance HFH’s readiness to respond to disasters, and country strategic, contingency and management plans.
- Design, promote, facilitate and participate in disaster response (rapid response) training activities to increase the capacity of staff, volunteers and Habitat active communities.
- Assist in prepositioning shelter kits and provide guidance to define a minimum standard kit.
- Engage and connect with peer agencies and networks (internal and external), authorities and the DR³ donor communities.
- Advance the development of DR³ Community of Practice.
- Facilitate the development of DRR and mitigation intervention in collaboration with program team in line with Habitat Philippines country strategic business plan ensuring that it is within external standards in community resilience programming, with emphasis on international standards, such as SPHERE, IASC, Core Humanitarian Standards, etc.
To be an HFH employee, you have a responsibility to learn significant awareness on safeguarding in order to recognize and be alert for the signs of potential safeguarding misconduct, and to make a timely report about any incident related to it.
Minimum Requirements:
- Education: Bachelor’s degree or in development related studies
- Years of Related Experience:
- Minimum of 5 years of direct experience in managing Humanitarian emergency response, preparedness and DRR initiatives in the AP region
- Must have been deployed in at least 2 emergencies and or must have had experience working in hardship areas in shelter/housing interventions.
- Direct work experience in community development projects.
Qualifications
- Effective communication and coordination skills
- Demonstrated experience in providing training and development of training materials
- Excellent interpersonal skills, cross-cultural communication skills and ability to work with other cultures and nationalities
- Ability to work independently; and interdependently within a team, and with other HFH entities or partners
- Fluent in written and spoken English
- Ready and willing to be deployed in humanitarian response as advised by the Line Manager
Preferred:
- Graduate studies in the relevant field or equivalent experience
- Experience in designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating an interdisciplinary emergency response
- Experience in knowledge management
- Experience in developing DR³ framework that is appropriate to the context of Asia Pacific region
- Experience in writing project proposals, design, and management, including budgets – aligned with the requirements of the donors
- Experience working in a non-profit organization is preferred
- Knowledge on CVA preferred
- International experience in managing emergency response / preparedness initiatives
About Habitat for Humanity
Habitat for Humanity, founded in 1976, is a global, Christian-based nonprofit organization that grew out of an intentionally multi-racial community in rural Georgia. Seeking to put God’s love into action, Habitat brings together people of all faiths and people of no faith to build homes, communities and hope. Working alongside each other, we help families and individuals build and improve places to call home and achieve the strength, stability and self-reliance they need to build better lives for themselves. Habitat seeks individuals who have a willingness to affirm these principles and values.
At Habitat for Humanity International, we embrace a history rooted in creating equity and take our mission seriously by courageously committing to a culture and workplace where all staff feel safe, welcome, visible, respected, supported and valued. As an equal opportunity employer, we realize that our success depends upon building an inclusive workforce of diverse perspectives and encourage people of varied races (which is inclusive of traits historically associated with race, including, but not limited to, protective hairstyles and hair texture), ethnicities, national origins, tribes, religions, ages, gender identities and expressions, genders, sexual orientations, marital statuses, disabilities, veteran/reserve national guard statuses, socio-economic statuses, thinking and communication styles to work with us.
We also require that all staff take seriously their ethical responsibilities to safeguarding our intended beneficiaries, their communities (especially children), and all those with whom we work. In line with the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse, all staff must pass a thorough background screening and will be held accountable to upholding our policies around ethical behavior, including safeguarding and whistleblowing.