Humanitarian Needs Assessment Specialist at Plan International

Plan International is an independent development and humanitarian non-profit organisation that advances children’s rights and equality for girls. We support children’s rights from birth until they reach adulthood, and enable children to prepare for – and respond to – crises and adversity. We believe in the power and potential of every child, but know this is often suppressed by poverty, violence, exclusion and discrimination.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Humanitarian Needs Assessment Specialist

Location: Global, Flexible
Reports to: Head of Rapid Response & Readiness Unit, Global Humanitarian Team

Purpose of the Position

• 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 organizational 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.

Key Relationships:
Internal:

• Country office team 
• Implementing partner organizations. 
• National organizations
• Global Humanitarian Team
• Other Global Hub departments, such as Digital and MERL.
• Regional Hub Humanitarian Teams

External:

• UN agencies
• In-country institutional donors
• Peer agencies.
• Coordination mechanisms

Technical Expertise, Skills and Knowledge
Essential:

• Able and willing to deploy at short notice to humanitarian crises.
• Significant experience in developing and implementing humanitarian emergency needs assessments in a broad range of humanitarian contexts including rapid onset disasters.
• Proven experience of integrating gender lens to needs assessments.
• Demonstrable experience in the design and implementation of training activities.
• Good knowledge of donor requirements regarding needs assessments.
• Previous experience of using digital tools to support and strengthen needs assessment activities.
• Proven representational and coordination skills.
• Proven experience of working with the humanitarian clusters at country and global levels as well as other country level interagency coordination fora.
• Proven knowledge to conduct gender analysis in humanitarian contexts and ensure that humanitarian projects are at least gender aware.
• Strong analytical and report-writing skills.
• Proven understanding of key humanitarian standards (eg Sphere, CHS, Child Protection Minimum Standards, INEE amongst others)
• Familiarity with global standards and guidelines for assessing and analysing needs in a multi-sectoral setting.
• Proven experience with development and management of assessment tools
• Data analysis and reporting and presentation skills.
• Data protection and ethical considerations in assessments.
• Learning and improvement:

Desirable:

• Experience in developing advocacy talking points based on assessment findings.
• Experience in writing funding submissions for humanitarian donors.
• Demonstrable experience of working with partner organisations.
• Fluency in written and spoken English. French, Spanish or Arabic is desirable.

Application Closing Date
11th March, 2025. (UK midnight).

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should:

Note

• Equality, diversity and inclusion is at the very heart of everything that Plan International stands for.
• We want Plan International to reflect the diversity of the communities we work with, offering equal opportunities to everyone regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.
• Plan International is based on a culture of inclusivity and we strive to create a workplace environment that ensures every team, in every office, in every country, is rich in diverse people, thoughts, and ideas.
• We foster an organisational culture that embraces our commitment to racial justice, gender equality, girls’ rights and inclusion.
• Plan International believes that in a world where children face so many threats of harm, it is our duty to ensure that we, as an organisation, do everything we can to keep children safe. This means that we have particular responsibilities to children that we come into contact with and we must not contribute in any way to harming or placing children at risk.
• A range of pre-employment checks will be undertaken in conformity with Plan International’s Safeguarding Children and Young People policy. Plan International also participates in the Inter Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. In line with this scheme we will request information from applicants previous employers about any findings of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and/or sexual harassment during employment, or incidents under investigation when the applicant left employment. By submitting an application, the job applicant confirms their understanding of these recruitment procedures.
• Please note that Plan International will never send unsolicited emails requesting payment from candidates.