Technical Advisor I - Emergency Program Quality and Management (Remote)

About CRS

Catholic Relief Services is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. CRS works to save, protect, and transform lives in need in more than 100 countries, without regard to race, religion or nationality. CRS’ relief and development work is accomplished through programs of emergency response, HIV, health, agriculture, education, microfinance and peacebuilding.

The Humanitarian Response Department (HRD) provides leadership and support to CRS emergency programming. The HRD strengthens CRS’ impact through high quality, innovative programs; improved technical and management capacity at the field level; and active engagement in global efforts to promote excellence and learning in humanitarian response. The HRD has technical staff that support emergency program planning, rapid response, and capacity strengthening of staff and partners worldwide.

NOTE: This is a global telecommuter position; CRS will give preference to candidates who are based in countries where we have existing offices. CRS does not sponsor visas for telecommuting employees.

Job Summary:

You will provide technical advice and support to a range of program design and implementation issues in the area of Emergency Response and Recovery in line with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) program quality principles and standards, donor guidelines, and industry best practices to Country Program (CP) teams to advance the delivery of high-quality programming to the poor and vulnerable. This includes:

• Providing rapid deployment program quality, management (PQM) and leadership capacity for breaking and ongoing humanitarian responses


• Contributing to humanitarian proposal design/development


• Supporting emergency PQM knowledge management and capacity building


• Engaging with CP teams to bring a humanitarian lens to discussions on broader program quality initiatives

Your advice, knowledge, and support will contribute to determining how effective, adaptive and innovative CRS’ Emergency Response and Recovery programming is across the globe.

Roles and Key Responsibilities:

• Support the development and contribute to the implementation of agency-wide strategies, standards, tools and best practices in Emergency Response and Recovery that effectively engage partners, donors, and governments. Help ensure a cross-sectoral approach integrating gender, protection mainstreaming, and disaster risk reduction.


• Provide technical solutions to CP teams, remotely and on-site, for strategic planning and how to best apply standards, best practices, partnership principles, tools and M&E, helping to ensure high-quality implementation. Take on acting emergency leadership roles (e.g., Emergency Coordinator, Head of Office) and support the set up and/or management of emergency field offices, teams, and relief operations as requested during field deployments.  Support may also be provided in other response functions such as security, staffing, supply chain/logistics, finance, IT/communications and administration, as needed.


• Contribute to, and in some cases lead, the development of the technical design for proposals. Support the process of preparation, design, submission and approval of project concepts and full-fledged proposals. As needed, act as a technical or lead writer on proposal development teams. Advise project teams on integrating donor strategies, priorities and technical requirements into CRS’ approach.


• Support capacity strengthening initiatives in Emergency Response and Recovery programming for staff and partner through helping develop learning and training strategies and agendas/curriculums, conducting trainings and workshops, and coaching.


• Collect and analyze program data, capture and share lessons learned and best practices for specific projects to facilitate improvements in decision-making and contribute to the Emergency Response and Recovery learning agenda.


• Contribute to maintaining relationships with donors, peer organizations, research and other institutions, participate in forums in the area of Emergency Response and Recovery to collect and share best practices and promote CRS’ work.


• Promote health and wellbeing of CRS and partner emergency staff.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Strong relationship management skills with ability to influence and get buy-in from people not under direct supervision and to work with individuals in diverse geographical and cultural settings


• Good strategic, analytical, problem-solving and systems thinking skills with capacity to see the big picture and ability to make sound judgment


• Good technical writing skills


• Presentation, facilitation, training, mentoring, and coaching skills


• Proactive, resourceful and results-oriented

Preferred Qualifications

• Additional relevant experience may substitute for some education.


• Knowledge of Humanitarian principles, standards and system, with specific knowledge of CRS and Caritas Internationalis emergency programming and standards a plus.


• Knowledge of design requirements and regulations of major emergency donors, including the US Government, EU/ECHO and UN agencies


• Highly proficient in security protocols and management of emergency programs in insecure environments


• Ability to maintain performance expectations and strong working relationships in diverse cultural contexts, psychologically and physically stressful environments


• Practical knowledge/skills in Information and Community Technology (ICT) and Information Management

Supervisory Responsibilities (if none, state none)

• The position will often undertake temporary supervision/management roles within CRS country programs during deployments, as requested.


• No regular supervision responsibilities for other staff within the HRD

Key Working Relationships:

Internal: HRD PQM team; HRD technical and operations staff; Regional RTAs and DRD/PQs; Country Representatives, Heads of Programs, Emergency Coordinators and Emergency Program staff of relevant Country Programs. 

External: Local emergency partners; Caritas Internationalis Member Organization representatives; peer NGO and UN agency humanitarian staff; humanitarian donors; relevant Emergency Cluster and Working Group members, as relevant.

Required Languages

Fluency in English and at least one additional CRS core language (Arabic, French, and/or Spanish) required, preference for Spanish.

Travel

Position is remote. Must be willing and able to travel up to 50% (i.e., six months out of the year); duration of a deployment will generally be from 3 to 8 weeks, depending on the needs of the country program. Candidates should have the capacity to live and work in difficult/stressful environments and serve wherever agency needs dictate.