Country: Switzerland
Closing date: 10 Jan 2018
The Global Shelter Cluster Promoting Safer Building Working Group, co-led by CARE International UK and CRATerre, is seeking a consultant to advance some of the Working Group outputs.
About the Promoting Safer Building (PSB) Working Group:
The PSB Working Group is an activity endorsed by the Global Shelter Cluster. It is formed of members from a diversity of agencies and organisations, and includes academics and independent practitioners.
It is co-led by CARE International UK and CRATerre. The group is connected to a wider Promoting Safer Building Consortium that has several interconnected projects seeking to better understand self-recovery, safer building and the improvement of humanitarian shelter response after disasters. http://promotingsaferbuilding.org/
Background to PSB and self-recovery:
Poorly constructed buildings are often the largest cause of serious injury, trauma and death in the event of a natural disaster. After a disaster, most families rebuild their houses relying on their own resources, with little or no support from formal institutions or the humanitarian community. They “self-recover”. An analysis of statistics shows that the impact of aid agencies on housing recovery rarely reaches more than 20% of affected families and is frequently in single figures. Moreover, much of that support is in the form of temporary or transitional housing that is not intended to last more than a few years. Therefore, we know that 80%, or more, self-recover.
The challenge for the humanitarian community, as well as national and local institutions, is to support this inevitable process of self-recovery. Evidence from many post-disaster needs-assessments shows that families rapidly rebuild with little or no knowledge of safer building techniques. There is also evidence that the demand for technical assistance can be very high in the early days after a rapid onset disaster. However, as things stand, these homes are too often rebuilt using the same pre-disaster bad practice that caused so much death, injury and economic damage in the first place.
Currently we lack the skills to contextualize each unique situation, arrive rapidly and reliably at key technical messages and to systematically and effectively transmit those messages in an accessible way that allows informed choice and ensures maximum acceptance by the affected population. We know that simply informing people does not result in better, safer building; we also know that there are no universal solutions.
Many recent experiences in Africa, Latin America, Caribbean, and Asia have confirmed the relevance of a self-recovery approach and of the approaches that have been developed so far to support it. The recent World Habitat Award won by CARE Philippines for its post-typhoon Haiyan housing project is further testimony to the impact of this approach.
In 2017, the Promoting Safer Building Consortium was endorsed by the Global Shelter Cluster as an official Cluster Working Group specifically mandated to address the development of the project’s outputs regarding the understanding and selection of effective and appropriate Build Back Safer messages.
https://www.sheltercluster.org/working-group/promoting-safer-building-wg
Planned activities of the Working Group:
- Develop a cluster protocol for appropriately rigorous and evidence-based identification, review and selection of key build-back-safer messages for endorsement by national clusters; to be integrated with national cluster technical working groups.
- Develop a guideline for how a library of IEC materials could be developed and reviewed for technical quality, suitability etc. and suitable tagging/referencing by country, hazard, building typology, context, climate etc.
- Min 3 country profiles produced according to the protocol and with inputs from the working group partners.
- Produce a Global Shelter Cluster report highlighting key technical areas where there is uncertainty or lack of knowledge, or a lack of effective intervention, to help guide (the resourcing of) future research and development.
- Disseminate findings through the workshops and events of the Promoting Safer Building project and future Global Shelter Cluster meeting(s).
The role of the consultant targets activity 1, 2 and 3.
Responsibilities and Tasks
- Propose a guideline for identifying and categorising technical IEC (information, education, communication) materials to be approved by the Working Group leads.
- In collaboration with the Working Group leads CARE International UK and CRATerre, as well as other WG partners, develop a work plan for the duration of the project with key milestones for the development of the protocol mentioned in activity 1 above.
Develop the research required to inform the protocol such as interviewing practitioners to identify strategic stages of key message development in current practice and critical information needed.
Identify the gaps and challenges in the process of key message development and implementation that need further consultation from the Working Group and research activities.
Research and identify best practices in the development of key messages from other sectors particularly WASH/Hygiene promotion and health.
Develop drafts of protocol and participate in routine revision meetings and feedback sessions with Working Group partners.
Identify and collate resources that support the implementation of the protocol.
Assist with the dissemination of the protocol.
Assist in the design of the methodology to develop country profiles of Local Building Cultures (how to answer a request / who to involve when / what kind of reviewing before dissemination? Etc.)
Other duties as assigned.
Qualifications
Education/Training
- Relevant university degree required
Experience & Technical Skills
- At least three years of humanitarian experience is desirable, preferably in emergency shelter projects and emergency distributions;
- Strong understanding of relevant functions in emergency shelter programming, including experience working with Build Back Safer messages
- Experience in shelter response coordination
- Familiarity with both urban and rural disaster contexts
- Familiarity with self-recovery principles
- Experience in secondary and primary research methods is desirable
- Good communications & writing capacity
- Computer and finance skills
Competencies
- Commitment to and understanding of CARE, CRATerre; IFRC and Global Shelter Cluster core values and principles;
- Excellent interpersonal and team skills;
- Excellent knowledge and understanding of local communities;
- Ability to work with MS-Office;
- Fluency in written and spoken English;
- Strong organizational skills;
- Pro-active and helpful attitude, ready to take on variety of new tasks;
- Ability to multi-task; and manage competing priorities.
Timeframe
The consultancy is to start immediately and is for a maximum of 45 working days over a 3-month period. If additional time is required to meet the overall objective of this assignment, an extension may be possible for and additional period to be determined and subject to the availability of resources.
About the Global Shelter Cluster
The Global Shelter Cluster (GSC) is an Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC)[1] coordination mechanism that supports people affected by natural disasters and internally displaced people in conflicts with the means to live in safe, dignified and appropriate shelter. The GSC enables better coordination among all shelter actors, including local and national governments, so that the people who need shelter assistance get help faster and receive the right kind of support. The GSC’s scope includes all activities related to achieving the right to adequate housing with a humanitarian focus. This includes: emergency and longer term shelter support, shelter-related non-food-items (NFIs), housing construction and reconstruction, settlement support such as site planning and urban planning, shelter preparedness and risk reduction.
The GSC management structure includes Working Groups, which are task-oriented and time-bound structures with clear executable deliverables to address particular identified needs or advance GSC activities. The GSC PSB WG is responsible for strengthening the Shelter Cluster’s capacity to develop Build Back Safer messages and better support self-recovery processes.
[1] The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) is the primary mechanism for interagency coordination of humanitarian assistance. It is a unique forum involving the key humanitarian partners, including UN agencies, the IFRC, the ICRC, and the main international NGO consortia.
How to apply:
Interested applicants, please send your CV and a cover letter outlining your interest in this consultancy and how your experience, qualifications and skills make you an ideal candidate for the role. Please also include your asking daily fee or total budget. Applications are to be sent to Flinn@careinternational.org; olivier.moles@neuf.fr and pablo.medina@ifrc.org by the end of Wednesday, January 10, 2018.