Humanitarian Needs Assessment Specialist at Plan International

The Opportunity

The Humanitarian Needs Assessment specialist will support country offices to conduct strong needs assessments in real time to improve principled humanitarian action, design relevant programmes, and help position Plan International for funding, ensuring we are able to meet the needs of the most at-risk children. The post holder will ensure user-friendly tools and guidelines are in place to support Country Offices conducting strong needs assessments and deliver high-quality needs assessment reports in real time. The post holder will be expected to travel regularly to support Country Offices design and implement needs assessments, Travel may be at short notice.

The Person

• The ideal candidate will have experience in humanitarian disaster relief management in a global organisation and driving innovations or improvements. 
• Active extensive experience in humanitarian crisis relief across multiple organizations and countries.
• Significant experience in developing and implementing humanitarian emergency needs assessments in a broad range of humanitarian contexts including rapid-onset disasters.
• Proven experience in integrating gender lens to needs assessments. Demonstrable experience in the design and implementation of training activities.

ACCOUNTABILITIES

• Develop user friendly tools and guidance for use by Country Office staff globally for both rapid needs assessments and (multisectoral) needs assessments.
• Ensures gender is a core component of all needs assessments so that specific needs and risks for girls, boys, women and men are identified.
• Ensures all needs assessments capture sex, age, disability disaggregated data as per Sphere standards.
• Ensure our approach to needs assessments aligns with the Core Humanitarian Standard and sector specific guidelines and standards.
• Ensures a child friendly complaints and feedback mechanism is integrated into all needs assessment activities.
• Develops needs assessment training support for Country Offices to help build organisational capacity.
• Support global technical leads develop sector specific needs assessments formats, tools and guidelines.
• Engages with IASC and other interagency networks focussing on needs assessments approaches positioning Plan International as a key humanitarian agency.
• Together with the MERL Teams ensure Plan Internationals needs assessments are done where possible through digital tools.
• Together with MERL team work to ensure alignment of needs assessments with monitoring and evaluation approaches.
• Deploy at short notice to support Country Office to develop and implement a needs assessment.
• In collaboration with the European Union Liaison Office and European National Organisations strengthen our submissions to ECHO during the HIP season.
• Maintains contact with humanitarian specialists in National Organisations to remain aware of specific donor requirements for needs assessments.
• Support country offices develop their needs assessments in to documents that can be shared externally with donors, clusters, and peer agencies.
• Annually provide a snapshot of all needs assessments conducted and key trends identified.
• Collaborates with the Global Fundraising Hub to provide information from needs assessments that supports marketing activities and fundraising.
• Close coordination with policy and influencing colleagues to ensure data from needs assessments are integrated into policy and influencing talking point