Netherlands/United Kingdom/United States: Temporary Protection Advisor (With Focus on Strengthening Protection Mainstreaming)

Valid unrestricted work authorization in the country in which you will be based (United States, UK and Netherlands) is required at the time of application for this position.

Position Status: Full-time, Temporary, 6 months

Salary:

US Starting salary for this role will be USD 64,000 to USD 76,000 commensurate on experience.
UK starting salary for this role will be £ 44,320 to £ 52,530 commensurate on experience.
Netherlands starting salary for this role will be € 52,960 to € 62,890 commensurate on experience.

About Mercy Corps: 

Mercy Corps is a global organization working in humanitarian and development contexts where it partners with communities to build secure, productive, and just communities in over 40 countries around the world — helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger and resilient communities from within. Mercy Corps is powered by the belief that a better world is possible. To do this, we know our teams do their best work when they are diverse, and every team member feels that they belong. We welcome diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be stronger and have long term impact.

The Team: 

This position would be part of Mercy Corps’ Technical Support Unit (TSU). The TSU is a key part of the Program Department. TSU subject-matter experts help set agency strategy and provide consultation – from assessment and design through project implementation and results measurement – to country offices worldwide, in some of the world’s toughest places. TSU team members lead research, foster organizational learning, represent Mercy Corps to external audiences, and develop partnerships. The TSU is also integral to global business development and revenue. Protection is part of the Social Inclusion team in the TSU, which promotes Mercy Corps goals to support and empower marginalized communities using safe, diverse and inclusive approaches and programming.

The Position: 

Mercy Corps seeks to enhance the quality of protection mainstreaming and make it more visible in the organization by setting up and maintaining structures that will promote protection mainstreaming within each technical sector and enable a platform for sharing knowledge and strengthening capacity across our teams globally. The Protection Technical Advisor would support strategy development and implement a knowledge management plan that would endorse industry best practices in protection mainstreaming and cultivate existing expertise within the organization to share experience and lessons learned in an effort to strengthen organizational capacity. Through regular and consistent communication and engagement, they will heighten the visibility and centrality of protection within our work. They will also adopt systems to measure protection mainstreaming efforts which will allow Mercy Corps to track how well teams operationalize protection mainstreaming initiatives in our humanitarian and development work. As part of Mercy Corps Safe, Diverse, and Inclusive goals, they would make sure that protection mainstreaming aligns with Mercy Corps’ safe programming initiatives and coordinates closely with the Mercy Corps teams who focus on safeguarding, accountability for affected persons (AAP/CARM), and gender equality and social inclusion (GESI). This position is currently funded at full time for a six-month period. There is potential for this to become a full-time regular position in the future.

Essential Responsibilities: 

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND CAPACITY STRENGTHENING: 

• Support the development of and oversee a knowledge management and capacity strengthening strategy that supports an enabling environment to operationalize protection mainstreaming.
• Establish and maintain learning and sharing forums with Mercy Corps technical teams that can strengthen the operationalization of protection mainstreaming within technical sectors and across the organization.
• Develop and routinely facilitate learning platforms (webinars, trainings, training of trainers) on protection mainstreaming basics and sector specific best practices that enables new and existing Mercy Corps team members to strengthen and refresh their understanding of protection mainstreaming.
• Support the development of an outreach strategy to engage team members, who are less engaged with protection mainstreaming in their sector.
• Consolidate, maintain and make widely available reference materials for easy access.

OPERATIONALIZATION OF PROTECTION MAINSTREAMING: 

• Partner with country programs to develop plans of action on protection mainstreaming.
• Design and analyze surveys to understand strengths, gaps, and opportunities for capacity strengthening.
• Work closely with Mercy Corps sector and country team leaders to influence their engagement with the centrality of protection and how protection mainstreaming is an added value to reaching their sector and project goals.

MONITORING AND LEARNING: 

• Work with the Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) teams to ensure that monitoring and evaluation is practical and incorporates protection mainstreaming best practices
• Support MELs ability to incorporate safe and ethical practices when accessing information about marginalized groups and insecure contexts.
• Assess and set a baseline of protection mainstreaming initiatives in selected country teams and programs.
• Develop tools to measure Mercy Corps’ adoption of protection mainstreaming.
• Monitor quality of protection mainstreaming initiatives and develop case studies, lessons learned, and blogs to promote best practices in Mercy Corps internal communication forums.

COORDINATION: 

• Coordinate with the Sr Protection Advisor and regional GESI advisors to identify entry points and opportunities within country teams that could initiate and/or stimulate protection mainstreaming initiatives.
• Coordinate with advisors from Social Inclusion teams (GESI, YPP, and GAYA) with developing and supporting complementary knowledge exchange forums and training.
• Coordinate with TSU knowledge management lead to leverage best practices and coordinate activities
• Coordinate with the Safeguarding and AAP-CARM teams to align Safe Programming initiatives and clarify roles and responsibilities.
• Ensure that protection mainstreaming language syncs with evolving safe programming initiatives.
• Draft communication materials to define safe programming – ie explain how protection mainstreaming complements, aligns and differentiates with Safeguarding, CARM and GESI initiatives

INFLUENCE AND REPRESENTATION: 

• Support the development of a strategy to ensure protection mainstreaming is consistently visible across Mercy Corps
• Represent Mercy Corps at internal and external forums, events, and meetings to highlight protection mainstreaming efforts and cultivate lessons learned from other technical sectors and partner agencies that can advance knowledge management of protection mainstreaming.
• Conduct assessments; write case studies, learning documents, short articles, and blogs; and develop internal and external dissemination plans for all products.

HUMAN RESOURCES, SAFEGUARDING AND DIVERSITY: 

• Support Mercy Corps global and regional initiatives for human resources, including safeguarding and diversity, and talent development;
• Collaborate with the people team to promote staff access to high quality learning opportunities, with a special emphasis on national team member development;
• Assist with the on-boarding of team members, ensuring they are set up for success and familiar with agency systems, procedures, and protocols.

Supervisory Responsibility: None.

Accountability: 

Reports Directly To: Director, Young People and Protection

Works Directly With: Social Inclusion team members, Safeguarding, and CARM teams, programs teams, Technical Support Unit teams.

Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders: 

Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

Minimum Qualification & Transferable Skills: 

• Bachelor’s degree required. M.A, M.S., M.Sc., or equivalent in social sciences, international development, public health or related field.
• 4+ years of experience managing projects or providing technical leadership in protection, GBV, or child protection programming in humanitarian and/or development settings.
• Strong foundation in and experience in providing technical support in Protection Mainstreaming including mainstreaming GBV risk mitigation and child protection.
• Be current with protection mainstreaming initiatives, tools, and guidance in the humanitarian and development space.
• Demonstrated experience in developing and implementing capacity strengthening strategies and behavior change approaches.
• Demonstrated experience establishing communities of practice and cultivating technical excellence.
• Experience facilitating virtual and in-person workshops, trainings, and webinars with diverse audiences.
• English verbal and written proficiency required, proficiency in either French or Arabic preferred.
• Proven verbal and written communication skills;
• Ability to multitask, organize and prioritize daily tasks and the big picture.
• Demonstrated flexibility and creativity in planning and problem-solving.
• Ability to distill complex information and data into accessible conversation and written pieces.
• Ability to effectively apply relevant Mercy Corps’ procedures and approaches.

Success Factors: 

The successful candidate will combine technical knowledge of protection, collaboration with other sectors, and behavior change approaches to enable a problem-solving approach towards implementing protection mainstreaming across various sector teams. They would be able to demonstrate nuanced understanding of the challenges teams of different sectors face when implementing their programming while incorporating protection mainstreaming best practices at various stages of the humanitarian continuum through to the nexus with development programming. They would have strong skills with organizing and sustaining networks and maintaining purpose, vigor, and cross collaboration in the groups. This would be fortified by great facilitation skills that can engage people with different experiences and catalyze mutual participation and capacity strengthening. They can spur creative thinking, and the know-how to build trusting relationships across cultures and geographies. They will also have strong written and verbal communication skills. Prioritizing, problem solving, and attention to detail and the big picture are essential. The most successful Mercy Corps staff members have a strong commitment to teamwork and accountability, thrive in evolving and changing environments.

Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions: 

The position can be based where Mercy Corps has offices in the US (Portland OR or Washington DC), UK (Edinburgh or London). Candidates must have current residency and work permits to work in those locations. This position requires up to 30% travel to support country programs, which may include travel to insecure locations where freedom of movement is limited and areas where amenities are limited. Housing for this role is in individual housing and staff will have access to good medical services and the living situation is of a high standard.

Ongoing Learning: 

In support of our belief that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities we serve, we empower all team members to dedicate 5% of their time to learning activities that further their personal and/or professional growth and development

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion: 

Achieving our mission begins with how we build our team and work together. Through our commitment to enriching our organization with people of different origins, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of thinking, we are better able to leverage the collective power of our teams and solve the world’s most complex challenges. We strive for a culture of trust and respect, where everyone contributes their perspectives and authentic selves, reaches their potential as individuals and teams, and collaborates to do the best work of their lives.

We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a journey, and we are committed to learning, listening and evolving to become more diverse, equitable and inclusive than we are today.

Equal Employment Opportunity: 

Mercy Corps is an equal opportunity employer that does not tolerate discrimination on any basis. We actively seek out diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be collectively stronger and have sustained global impact.

We are committed to providing an environment of respect and psychological safety where equal employment opportunities are available to all. We do not engage in or tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender identity, gender expression, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability (including HIV/AIDS status), marital status, military veteran status or any other protected group in the locations where we work.

Safeguarding & Ethics: 

Mercy Corps is committed to ensuring that all individuals we come into contact with through our work, whether team members, community members, program participants or others, are treated with respect and dignity. We are committed to the core principles regarding prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse laid out by the UN Secretary General and IASC and have signed on to the Interagency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. We will not tolerate child abuse, sexual exploitation, abuse, or harassment by or of our team members. As part of our commitment to a safe and inclusive work environment, team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, respect local laws and customs, and to adhere to Mercy Corps Code of Conduct Policies and values at all times. Team members are required to complete mandatory Code of Conduct elearning courses upon hire and on an annual basis.

As a safeguarding measure, Mercy Corps screens all potential US-Based employees. This is done following the conclusion of recruitment and prior to assuming full employment.

Our screening process is designed to be transparent and completed in partnership with new Team Members. You will have the opportunity to disclose any prior convictions at the conclusion of the recruitment process before the check is initiated. We ask that you do not disclose any prior convictions in your application materials or during the recruitment process.

Covid-19 Vaccine Policy for US-Based Employees.

Mercy Corps has determined that, in an effort to protect the health, safety, and well-being of all Mercy Corps employees working in the United States, all U.S.-based employees must be fully vaccinated for COVID-19, regardless of prior COVID-19 infection status. This policy is necessary to ensure not only the safety of our workforce, but the ongoing functionality of the organization.

This policy will be revised as needed to comply with federal, state, and local requirements, and to respond to changing guidance from public health authorities.

For new employees this requirement goes into effect within 10 business days of employment. Team members that travel are expected to comply with host-country requirements, including vaccinations. Failure to comply may impact your employment. Proof of vaccination or exemption must be provided.

How to Apply: 

Application link: Apply Here