Latest Vacancies at Development Alternatives Incorporated (DAI)

Job Code: 6634

Description

• The Centre for Disaster Protection was launched by the UK Prime Minister in July 2017 to strengthen resilience in developing countries through better preparedness and planning backed by risk-based financing arrangements. The Centre is funded with UK aid from the UK government.
• The Centre for Disaster Protection works to change how the world prepares and pays for disasters. Identifying, planning for and financing disasters before they strike saves lives, reduces suffering and protects livelihoods and economies, especially for the poorest and most vulnerable communities.
• The Centre brings countries together with international development, humanitarian and private sector organisations to find solutions and advocate for change. We find ways to stop disasters devastating lives by supporting countries and the international system to better manage risks. To do this, the Centre provides advisory services, builds knowledge, catalyses innovation and creates partnerships across the development, humanitarian and financial sectors.
• With Covid-19, the world is more aware than ever of the importance of being prepared and working together to address risks. The Centre’s work has never been more crucial.
• With a recent funding uplift from the UK government to mid-2025, the Centre is entering a new period of organisational growth, evolving beyond its start-up phase to tackle the increasingly urgent impact of climate change and frequency of disasters around the world.

The Centre’s technical work is focused on cross-cutting goals as set out in our five-year strategy (2019-2024): 

• Advice -  quality assurance and advisory services and training: We will have a respected and widely used quality assurance function that has increased the quantity and quality of risk financing products and services.
• Our effective technical assistance and capacity building will have supported high risk, vulnerable countries to make better disaster risk management decisions through knowledge exchange and genuine skills transfer.
• Evidence and Learning: We will be internationally recognised as driving change through evidence, experimentation and learning which will strengthen the global evidence base on disaster risk financing.
• Advocacy and Influencing:  Through advocacy and influencing and being a positive disrupter, we will have improved the quality and quantity of disaster risk financing through the multilateral system.
• Additionally, we are focused on building effective systems and processes on people and operations to support the Centre to rapidly yet strategically scale and grow in a way that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion and ensures the organisation is a great place to work.

The Role

• As part of our organisational growth plan, we are looking for an exceptional candidate to support the Centre to achieve its mission and goals through strategic communications.
• As the Centre evolves beyond its start-up phase, the Head of Communications will be critical to guiding the strategic delivery of the Centre’s communications strategy, both internally and externally as we deliver on our ambitious work plan.
• Key to this will be working with the Senior Leadership Team to ensure that the communications function is an enabling one, working across the Centre’s goals to drive results and uphold the Centre’s culture and values.

The role will require:

• Creating, driving and managing media relations to ensure timely and accurate coverage of the Centre’s work and further the reach of the Centre’s organisational objectives.
• Establishing and implementing a multi-channel, integrated communications strategy to support the strategic priorities of the Centre.
• Working across the Centre’s portfolio of evidence and research programmes to identify innovative opportunities for effective strategic communication and outreach activities.
• Providing tactical communications support and guidance to the Centre as a whole and to Advisory, Advocacy and Research colleagues.
• Ensure consistent, accurate messaging and alignment of content as well as developing the Centre’s brand voice, maintaining brand integrity across all communications activity.
• Contributing to work-planning and budgeting decisions.
• Managing and developing the communications function.
• Collaborating with and managing a comprehensive communications agency to assist us with our external communications activity.
• Creative leadership with the ability of using evidence into compelling communications products for a variety of different audiences and targets.
• Supporting the continued embedding of the Centre’s commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion.

Person Specification
Ideal candidates will:

• Bring strong strategic leadership on communication.
• Demonstrate confidence and enjoy problem solving and delivering impact.
• Welcome diverse feedback and take genuine pleasure in helping a team develop.
• Enthusiasm to work in a team dedicated to learning and development, with the opportunity to build and lead a talented team in a period of growth.

Skills and Experience:
Successful candidates will be able to demonstrate the following skills and experience:

• Significant experience working in media, communications and/or public relations – preferably in a relevant field of humanitarian, development, or disaster management;
• Ability to work effectively with a broad mix of clients and partners, as well as diverse teams of people.
• Excellent written and oral communications skills and able to articulate complex messages into straightforward language.
• Providing a strategic communications focus and showcasing projects to support advocacy and influencing objectives.
• Supporting development of an organisational communications culture and demonstrating commitment to the development of professional skills and expertise.
• Demonstrating broad integrated communications knowledge across PR, social media, web, corporate and stakeholder communications.
• A strong and demonstrable track record of developing brands and storytelling to a wide range of audiences.
• Experience of working with research, academic and policy content for communication purposes.
• Commitment to joining and contributing to a values-based organisation and culture.

The Offer

• A competitive salary in the region of £60 - 80,000 depending on experience.
• After a successful probation period, the contract will be until the end of June 2025, renewable if project funding is extended. The roles will be contracted by DAI Global UK, who are the Centre’s managing agent.
• A generous benefits package including 25 days annual leave (plus public holidays) and a contributory pension scheme.
• We have an office in the City of London, but we are open to considering flexible, part-time and remote working arrangements.

go to method of application »

Job Code: 6635

Description

• The Centre for Disaster Protection was launched by the UK Prime Minister in July 2017 to strengthen resilience in developing countries through better preparedness and planning backed by risk-based financing arrangements. The Centre is funded with UK aid from the UK government.
• The Centre for Disaster Protection works to change how the world prepares and pays for disasters. Identifying, planning for and financing disasters before they strike saves lives, reduces suffering and protects livelihoods and economies, especially for the poorest and most vulnerable communities.
• The Centre brings countries together with international development, humanitarian and private sector organisations to find solutions and advocate for change. We find ways to stop disasters devastating lives by supporting countries and the international system to better manage risks. To do this, the Centre provides advisory services, builds knowledge, catalyses innovation and creates partnerships across the development, humanitarian and financial sectors.
• With Covid-19, the world is more aware than ever of the importance of being prepared and working together to address risks. The Centre’s work has never been more crucial.
• With a recent funding uplift from the UK government to mid-2025, the Centre is entering a new period of organisational growth, evolving beyond its start-up phase to tackle the increasingly urgent impact of climate change and frequency of disasters around the world.

The Centre’s technical work is focused on cross-cutting goals as set out in our five-year strategy (2019-2024): 

• Advice -  quality assurance and advisory services and training: We will have a respected and widely used quality assurance function that has increased the quantity and quality of risk financing products and services. Our effective technical assistance and capacity building will have supported high risk, vulnerable countries to make better disaster risk management decisions through knowledge exchange and genuine skills transfer.
• Evidence and Learning: We will be internationally recognised as driving change through evidence, experimentation and learning which will strengthen the global evidence base on disaster risk financing.
• Advocacy and Influencing:  Through advocacy and influencing and being a positive disrupter, we will have improved the quality and quantity of disaster risk financing through the multilateral system.
• Additionally, we are focused on building effective systems and processes on people and operations to support the Centre to rapidly yet strategically scale and grow in a way that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion and ensures the organisation is a great place to work.

The Role

• As part of our organisational growth plan, we are expanding our Advisory team and recruiting up to three Lead Risk Financing Experts to support the delivery of the Centre’s ambitious workplan – in which our advisory offer is a strategic priority.
• This workstream includes advice, quality assurance and training to developing country governments, international development and humanitarian organisations and donors to improve disaster risk management and financing. The workstream aims to ensure high quality crisis and disaster risk financing is available to and used to good effect by countries and organisations, so that the most vulnerable people are better protected.
• Examples of work to be undertaken may include, for example: leading a team of consultants to provide technical advice to a low-income country government or a regional development bank on a disaster risk financing product; leading a review of a proposal from a humanitarian agency for a new risk management or financing initiative; or leading on the design of specific risk financing solutions and presenting findings at a global event.

In addition to role-specific responsibilities, the Lead Risk Finance Experts will be required to:

• Uphold the organisation’s values and contribute to a positive organisational culture. 
• Build the Centre’s external reputation through delivering excellent technical work and the development of innovative solutions.
• Develop effective partnerships and relationships at senior levels across the development, humanitarian and financial sectors.
• Manage and supervise teams of Centre staff and consultants, coaching and mentoring colleagues as required, including potentially direct line management of a Risk Analyst.
• One of the roles will also lead our training programme, increasing a range of stakeholders’ knowledge and enabling them to better engage with both the theory and practice of DRF to challenge the current system of slow and inefficient disaster relief.
• The Centre’s training aims to create a common language around DRF, encourage dialogue and debate around best practice, facilitate peer learning exchange, and ultimately equip stakeholders to do more and better DRF.
• The Centre’s DRF training offering has been conceptualised, delivered and evaluated with a number of different stakeholders, ranging from country governments to multi-lateral institutions and humanitarian organisations. Due to the pandemic, the foundational training modules have been delivered remotely and feedback from our stakeholders has been extremely positive.
• This workstream is now at scale-up stage, with the scope to build upon this success and shape a comprehensive training programme and learning strategy to amplify the impact of this workstream.

Person Specification
Successful candidates should:

• Demonstrate a strong commitment to building resilience and reducing vulnerability in low and middle-income countries.
• Understanding of and commitment to the Centre’s values and mission.
• Be willing to travel to Africa, Asia, and other international locations as needed including lower income and fragile, conflict-affected contexts (as a guide, one week every 1 - 2 months, to be arranged only if restrictions due to COVID-19 allow).

Skills and Experience:

Successful candidates will be able to demonstrate the following skills and experience:

• Significant relevant professional experience from senior level advisory roles.
• Significant technical expertise (and where relevant, professional qualifications) in disaster risk financing or a relevant field, such as public financial management, insurance, risk management, risk modelling, actuarial science, economics, shock-responsive social protection / services, or humanitarian finance.
• Broad experience delivering technical assistance projects and/or analytical and advisory services in a developing country context.
• Strong track record in complex client management and the ability to build effective strategic partnerships across different sectors and stakeholders, including working with government at a senior level.
• A strong understanding of actors, incentives, and institutional and policy environment of multilateral and bilateral international development.
• Strong track record in presenting to large, senior, and multi-stakeholder audiences.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English; other languages, particularly French, would be advantageous.
• Ability to take initiative and work effectively as part of a dynamic, multidisciplinary team.
• Relevant professional experience in developing and delivering training and/or professional education, learning and development is a plus, and is a requirement for the training role.
• Experience commissioning, supporting or delivering research in a developing country context is a plus.

The Offer

• A competitive salary in the region of £60 - 80,000 depending on experience.
• After a successful probation period, the contract will be until the end of June 2025, renewable if project funding is extended. The roles will be contracted by DAI Global UK, who are the Centre’s managing agent.
• A generous benefits package including 25 days annual leave (plus public holidays) and a contributory pension scheme.
• We have an office in the City of London, but we are open to considering flexible, part-time and remote working arrangements.

go to method of application »

Job Code: 6636

Description

• The Centre for Disaster Protection was launched by the UK Prime Minister in July 2017 to strengthen resilience in developing countries through better preparedness and planning backed by risk-based financing arrangements. The Centre is funded with UK aid from the UK government.
• The Centre for Disaster Protection works to change how the world prepares and pays for disasters. Identifying, planning for and financing disasters before they strike saves lives, reduces suffering and protects livelihoods and economies, especially for the poorest and most vulnerable communities.
• The Centre brings countries together with international development, humanitarian and private sector organisations to find solutions and advocate for change. We find ways to stop disasters devastating lives by supporting countries and the international system to better manage risks. To do this, the Centre provides advisory services, builds knowledge, catalyses innovation and creates partnerships across the development, humanitarian and financial sectors.
• With Covid-19, the world is more aware than ever of the importance of being prepared and working together to address risks. The Centre’s work has never been more crucial.
• With a recent funding uplift from the UK government to mid-2025, the Centre is entering a new period of organisational growth, evolving beyond its start-up phase to tackle the increasingly urgent impact of climate change and frequency of disasters around the world.

The Centre’s technical work is focused on cross-cutting goals as set out in our five-year strategy (2019-2024): 

• Advice -  quality assurance and advisory services and training: We will have a respected and widely used quality assurance function that has increased the quantity and quality of risk financing products and services. Our effective technical assistance and capacity building will have supported high risk, vulnerable countries to make better disaster risk management decisions through knowledge exchange and genuine skills transfer.
• Evidence and Learning: We will be internationally recognised as driving change through evidence, experimentation and learning which will strengthen the global evidence base on disaster risk financing.
• Advocacy and Influencing:  Through advocacy and influencing and being a positive disrupter, we will have improved the quality and quantity of disaster risk financing through the multilateral system.
• Additionally, we are focused on building effective systems and processes on people and operations to support the Centre to rapidly yet strategically scale and grow in a way that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion and ensures the organisation is a great place to work.

The Role

• As part of our organisational growth plan, we are expanding our operations team to recruit a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Manager to support the delivery of the Centre’s ambitious workplan – in which building an effective MEL system to enable the Centre to tell a compelling story of development impact is a strategic priority.
• The Centre works directly with countries and organisations to support them to own, plan and finance the risks they face by providing advisory services and building knowledge. Our advisory services provide potential clients and partners with advice, training and quality assurance services to support them to finance disaster risks differently, often through exploring links to other technical areas such as shock-responsive social protection and effective public financial management.
• The advisory work is complemented by research and evidence generation to contribute to global understanding of what works (and what doesn’t) and filling the evidence gap, for example through commissioning and supporting impact evaluations of anticipatory action, as well as using learning to adapt approaches and inform scaling up.
• Our advocacy and influencing work, in turn, supports the communication and dissemination of evidence to advocate for changes in the international system.
• The MEL Manager will be responsible for developing and implementing effective systems for monitoring the progress and evaluating the impact of the Centre’s work, and for embedding processes for capturing learning to inform adaptation of activities and generate lessons.
• The MEL Manager will work closely with other operations colleagues to refine the Centre’s logical framework, MEL plan, Theory of Change and Value for Money strategy. The MEL Manager will support teams to generate robust data and lead on analysis and insights to feed into reporting.
• They will be responsible for putting in place a system for data collection that is participatory, empowering for team members - being simple and user-friendly - and facilitates reporting to our donor and Board, and enables communication of impact to our stakeholders and the public.

In addition, the MEL Manager will be required to:

• Uphold the organisation’s values and contribute to a positive organisational culture. 
• Help to build the Centre’s external reputation through demonstrating the impact of our work.
• Contribute to creative and innovative thinking and working collaboratively across teams.
• The MEL Manager will be required to work effectively as part of a multi-disciplinary team of Centre staff and consultants, working closely with the Senior Leadership Team and Function Leads on MEL, Evidence and Learning, Advice, Training, Communication, and Advocacy and Influencing. The role will be technically supported by a MEL Lead Adviser at DAI HQ and will report into the Associate Director - Operations.

Person Specification
Successful candidates should:

• Demonstrate a passion for building resilience and reducing vulnerability in low and middle-income countries and thinking creatively to evidence harder to measure change at systems level.
• Show a clear understanding of and commitment to the Centre’s values and mission.
• Be willing to occasionally travel to Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and other international locations as needed, including lower income and fragile, conflict-affected contexts (only if restrictions due to COVID-19 allow).

Skills and Experience:
Successful candidates will be able to demonstrate the following skills and experience:

• Designing and delivering effective MEL plans and systems for donor governments, preferably with working experience of FCDO/DFID reporting requirements.
• Working knowledge of theory of change approaches and VfM frameworks.
• Familiarity with project cycle management in an international development context.
• Ability to design systems for both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis (with working knowledge of software and tools such as Stata, R, Kobo and ODK) and ability to interpret the data. 
• Good data visualisation skills and familiarity with tools such as PowerBI.
• Awareness of the importance of gender and social inclusion and understanding of how to build tools that are GESI sensitive and allow for disaggregation.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English with the ability to tailor communications to a range of audiences and to explain complex data in digestible, impactful formats. Other languages, particularly French, would be an advantage.
• Ability to work enthusiastically as a valued team member across multiple teams in parallel.
• Strong commitment to ongoing learning, including technical and non-technical skills and ability/willingness to train others in MEL theory and systems.

The Offer

• A competitive salary in the region of £40 - 50,000 depending on experience.
• After a successful probation period, the contract will be until the end of June 2025, renewable if project funding is extended. The roles will be contracted by DAI Global UK, who are the Centre’s managing agent.
• A generous benefits package including 25 days annual leave (plus public holidays) and a contributory pension scheme.
• We have an office in the City of London, but we are open to considering flexible, part-time and remote working arrangements.