Job Description

With over 70 years of experience, our focus is on helping the most vulnerable children overcome poverty and experience fullness of life. We help children of all backgrounds, even in the most dangerous places.

Come join our 34,000+ staff working in nearly 100 countries and share the joy of transforming vulnerable children’s life stories!

Employee Contract Type:

Job Description:

Environment and Safeguarding Officer - EMERGE

The Role:

The Environmental & Social Safeguarding Officer- EMERGE (ESS-O) will provide technical support to implementing partners on environmental and climate-risk management and ecosystems services awareness and action planning.   The ESS-O will monitor the impact of the program interventions on participant household’s child education, monitoring for negative outcomes like child labor. The position-holder will oversee the Environmental Mitigation & Monitoring Plan (EMMP), co-creating a monitoring framework with government and consortium members to rate the application of controls.  They will assess the impact of capital inputs and support business owners and community leaders to mitigate impact.  

S/He will support program technical advisors to integrate safeguarding standards into technical approaches. The ESS-O will create awareness and support mitigation planning for zoological and climatic shocks, hygiene & sanitation considerations, bi-diversity protection, natural resource management related to livelihood activities with program participants.  The ESS-O will support technical advisor to assess the adherence of potential collaborators/venders and train them on USAID’s environmental safety and safeguarding policies.  The ESS-O will conduct an annual survey to determine the impact of program on participant family’s child attendance in formal schools and informal schools.  S/He will mainstream awareness of children’s right to education via consortium member and implementing partners.

S/He will provide training in the perma-culture and natural resource management technical, creating understanding amongst program recipients of on the importance of eco-system services and how to protect and sustainably harness them to promote and sustain graduation out of poverty.  The ESS-O serve as the focal point with the federal Ministry of Agriculture and Southwest State Ministry of Environment, ensuring that program interventions integrate government-promoted quality standards and government is facilitated to monitor program interventions.

Key Responsibilities:

Provide technical leadership for environmental safeguarding

• Support the development, delivery and analysis of assessments, integrating questions aimed at understanding the state of the environment in program locations;
• In partnership with Resilience & Livelihoods Technical Advisor, develop/contextualize various assessment, participatory analysis tools, monitoring checklists and reporting formats; 
• Contextualize Initial Environmental Examination (IEE), Environmental Mitigation & Monitoring Plan (EMMP), Climate Risk Management (CRM), and Water Quality Assurance Plan (WQAP);
• Contextualize perma-culture/NRM insights into targeted training to enrich other EMERGE technical approaches;
• Lead training to technical advisor, consortium members and implementing partners in IEE, EMMP, CRM, WQAP toolkits and perma-culture insights;
• Support partners to undertake participatory environmental examination, risk/mitigation analysis and action planning process, ensuring that incorporate mitigation measures into EMERGE activities in accordance with EMMPs;
• With support for EMERGE M&E Advisor, establish a framework to track the impact of program activities on program participant’s child attendance at school and/or negative outcomes like child labor;
• Coordinate with World Vision Protection/Education Advisor and Mercy Corps to develop awareness material on the importance of education for family resilience;
• Develop vendor screening protocol, raise awareness of requirement, track its application and follow up with consortium members and implementing partners for compliance; 
• Identify success/challenge stories and support the development of learning/marketing/media products to profile best-practice/efforts; 
• In partnership with M&E Advisor, ensure GIS mapping of business sites and hazard mapping analysis is in place;

Environmental & social safeguarding mainstreamed in EMEGE approaches.

• Coordinate with World Vision WASH, Livelihoods, DRM technical advisors, ensuring that capital inputs and premises, physical rehab/construction/upgrade, and construction schemes incorporate mitigation measures identified in the EMMP;
• Lead the development workplans to support WV technical team engagement in EMERGE program;
• Support EMERGE technical advisors to review approaches, identify and targeted messages to introduce environmental protection and perma-culture/NRM awareness into EMERGE activities;
• Conduct periodical field visits in accordance with the monitoring and evaluation plan and in coordination with government counterparts and other teams;
• Develop a community-of-practice with consortium members and implementing partners to mobilize evolving best practice, promote cross-learning, and provide mentorship guidance;
• Lead survey of program participants of child labor practices, track trends, improve BCC messaging and collaborate with World Vision and Mercy Corp to improve attendance;

Capacity building of program implementers, collaborators and vendors.

• Train EMERGE mentor networks on concepts on perma-culture and natural resource management and how to protect the environment and leverage ecosystem services to support business enterprise;
• Train EMERGE mentor networks on the importance of child education and avoidance of child labor;
• Train consortium member and implementing partners staff on environmental safety and safeguarding measures and the specific mitigation strategies in the EMMP;
• Conduct periodical field visits in accordance with the monitoring and evaluation plan and in coordination with other program team officers
• Address any capacity gaps that are identified during field monitoring visits, to ensure program staffs at field level perform well according to environmental compliance standards
• Ensure all external actors such as vendors and contractors are sensitized on environmental safety standards and compliance benchmarks are met;
• Support development of human-centered programmatic environmental impact assessment and water quality assurance manuals, media products and other forms of BCC materials;

Coordination, collaboration and integration.

• Partner with federal and SWS Ministries of Environment to understand and apply where feasible existing environmental protection policy into training and mitigation action planning process;
• Facilitate government engagement and involvement in tool development, assessment/planning processes, monitoring trips, etc.;
• Ensure appropriate and continued coordination and joint-planning with other USAID funded programs and promote private sector engagement in the area of environment, climate change and NRM to collect and share best practices.
• Establish and maintain key relationships with counterparts at USAID, peer organizations, research and other institutions.;

Experiences and Qualifications

• BA/BSc or MA/Sc degree in a relevant academic area, such as Water Engineering; Hydrological Engineering; Soil and Water Engineering or Environmental Engineering.
• 4 years of related work experience, including field-level support of environmental safety and safeguards provision
• Experience in environmental sustainability, biodiversity conservations and management, project implementation and capacity building.
• Experience in environmental safeguards assessment, EIA, planning and implementation in USAID funded programs/projects.
• Knowledge and experience in engineering structures preferred
• Knowledge of Natural Resource Management and/or Perma-Culture approaches preferred
• English language proficiency, Somali dialect preferred

Working Environment:

• The position is office based in Baidoa with frequent travel to field sites in Baidoa and Hudur and some travel to Mogadishu.

Skills Required

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