Humanitarian Needs Assessment Specialist at Plan International

The Opportunity

The Humanitarian Rapid Needs Assessment Specialist in Plan International is responsible for setting and managing global standards for rapid needs assessments during emergencies, ensuring that methodologies, tools, and guidelines align with industry best practices. This role is pivotal in developing frameworks, tools, and guidelines that support effective and timely needs assessments. While direct implementation in the field may be limited, the Specialist will provide strategic guidance and support to Regional and Country Offices, ensuring that their assessments adhere to established standards and effectively address the needs of affected populations, with a particular focus on vulnerable groups such as children, especially girls, and gender considerations.

DIMENSIONS OF THE ROLE

• This position may line manage a team implementing the needs assessment.
• No budget responsibility is required for this position.
• Develops and maintains relationships with stakeholder groups both within Plan International and externally.
• May deploy at short notice to a Country Office for up to 4 months.
• The post is expected to be working in Country Offices regularly. In the first year this will be approximately 50% of the time. In subsequent years the post holder will spend up to 75% of the time in Country Offices.
• Builds the profile of the organisation through strengthening of Plan International’s Needs assessments and analysis of needs in humanitarian crises.

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 points.
• With fundraising colleagues support the development of marketing products.

Safeguarding

• Ensures that Plan International’s global policies for Child Protection (CPP) and Gender Equality and Inclusion (GEI) are fully embedded in accordance with the principles and requirements of the policy including relevant Implementation Standards and Guidelines as applicable to their area of responsibility. This includes, but is not limited to, ensuring staff and associates are aware of and understand their responsibilities under these policies and Plan International’s Code of Conduct (CoC), their relevance to their area of work, and that concerns are reported and managed in accordance with the appropriate procedures.