The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises, helping to restore health, safety, education, economic wellbeing, and power to people devastated by conflict and disaster. Founded in 1933 at the call of Albert Einstein, the IRC is one of the world’s largest international humanitarian non-governmental organizations (INGO), at work in more than 50 countries and more than 25 U.S. cities helping people to survive, reclaim control of their future and strengthen their communities. A force for humanity, IRC employees deliver lasting impact by restoring safety, dignity and hope to millions. If you’re a solutions-driven, passionate change-maker, come join us in positively impacting the lives of millions of people world-wide for a better future.
The IRC has pioneered and implemented programs that prevent and respond to violence against women and children, as well as other vulnerable groups in refugee settings and in other conflict-affected contexts, making the IRC a global leader in this field. IRC is one of the first humanitarian organisations to bring together specific expertise involved in violence prevention and response in conflict affected settings to ensure collaborative and still specialized support to survivors and those at risk of violence.
IRC’s Crisis Response, Recovery, and Development Department (CRRD) leads the IRC’s programing in crisis-impacted contexts worldwide. Within CRRD, the Technical Excellence (TechEx) pillar seeks to provide focused technical expertise in support of country-based colleagues and partner organizations in different regions. IRC’s Strategy 100 (S100) calls for a critical unpacking, acknowledgment of power dynamics and how they are reflected, addressed in programming, partnership and advocacy.
Through our Gender Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (GEDI) action plan, we have committed to improving program quality by understanding and taking action on the root causes of different forms of systemic inequalities and transforming how we partner, program, learn identify best practices, and share insights. The IRC is committed to striving for equal outcomes for diverse populations by using a deep understanding of prevailing social norms and power imbalances to ensure equitable access to services and to adopt a program design and delivery approach that maximizes power for the communities we serve through effective collaboration with clients, partners, and staff.
This expertise is housed in the Violence Prevention and Response Unit (VPRU), responsible for ensuring overall quality and communication of VPR work within the IRC through support to the field and support to promote and roll-out of global best practices. The VPRU includes specializations focused on Women Protection and Empowerment, Child Protection, Protection/ Rule of Law for refugees, IDPs and other vulnerable populations. IRC implements VPR programmes in over 40 countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa.
Job Overview / Summary:
The Safe, Inclusive and Transformative Lead role in the Violence Prevention and Response Technical Unit (VPRU) is one of the core functions driving quality programming within the VPR Unit and across Technical Excellences programming unit. The IRC approaches Safe, Inclusive and Transformative programming with a comprehensive lens incorporating different dimensions and accelerators of inclusion. This includes a foundational attention to gender inequities and the way they contribute to specific outcomes for persons impacted by crisis. Additionally, the IRC strives to bring an intersectional lens to program planning, development as well as partnership management. Beyond mainstreaming, we aim to combine a strong intersectional lens with a deliberate attention to addressing structural barriers linked to the core dimensions of age, different abilities, mental health/ psycho-social well-being, diverse SOGIESC and social identities. Our prevention portfolio seeks to address specific drivers of violence sitting at the intersection of these identities.
As the Safe, Inclusive and Transformative Programming Lead, you will oversee a team focused on inclusive humanitarian programming rooted in robust understanding of context, power dynamics, historical and systemic exclusions and attention to opportunities to interrupt, derail or contribute to enhanced gendered, social inclusion outcomes for populations affected by conflict, crisis and disasters.
This includes specific focus on gender, disability, age, ethnicity, religion, diverse Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Gender Expression, and Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC) and other identities as factors contributing to the way people from diverse backgrounds experience crisis, have their needs and aspirations addressed and their voices heard, accounted for and valued.
Hosted in the Violence Prevention and Response Unit, you will provide leadership on IRC’s approach to Gender Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (GEDI) in Programming work stream, which will require cross-organizational collaboration across the five outcome areas structuring IRC’s humanitarian programs: Education, Economic Recovery and Development, Governance, Health and Violence Prevention and Response. You will collaborate with the Global Practice and Regional teams, Program Development and MEAL teams on strategic planning, business development, evidence generation/use and capacity development.
Major Responsibilities:
Lead and coordinate efforts to incorporate inclusive and transformative programming strategies into IRC’s program design, implementation, learning framework(s) and associated business processes.
• Provide strategic vision and direction to safe, inclusive and transformative programming across IRC’s programming areas
• Collaborate with different technical staff across IRC’s Technical units in CRRD to promote and support coherent approaches to integrating GEDI principles in programs, in line with the IRC global Strategy (S100), GEDI Action Plan, and Safeguarding Minimum Standards
• Support the roll-out and continuous improvement of programming tools to ensure gendered and other systemic inequalities are accounted for, addressed and not exacerbated by humanitarian programming; this includes ensuring that tools consistently analyze and address safeguarding risks.
• Provide strategic leadership of IRC’s Violence Prevention work with a focus on modelling, leading the design of scale and impact strategies.
• Ensure technical assistance to headquarter and field teams incorporates attention to GEDI priorities and emerging needs
• Promote the understanding and practice of safeguarding risk analysis and mitigation across technical assistance delivery by supporting integration into tools/processes and by supporting the skills and confidence of Technical Unit colleagues
• Provide leadership and direction to gender and inclusion specialists to guide effective implementation, monitoring, learning and uptake of new resources and research.
• Provide technical oversight to GEDI strategic projects under the responsibility of VPRU ensuring projects are delivered on time, on scope and on budget
Leadership and representation
• Provide leadership to the GEDI in Programming workstream by establishing centralized approaches in line with the IRC TRANSFORM global standards.
• Provide internal representation in key IRC fora, and external representation in key inter-agency and other strategic humanitarian fora to contribute to, learn from and influence policy and practice.
• Advance IRC as a learning thought leader in the promotion of safe, inclusive and transformative humanitarian programming, rooted in strong analysis of context, power, gender and how intersecting aspects of identity may result in discrimination, oppression and exclusion.
• Promote, critically examine and guide capacity to meaningfully focus on gender, socio-economic inequities, disability, age, diverse SOGIESC inclusion while ensuring risks emerging contextual developments and humanitarian delivery strategies are anticipated and mitigated.
• In close collaboration with program teams, contribute to strategic planning and the long-term strategic direction of the IRC’s Inclusion programming portfolio.
• Contribute to the cohesive functioning of the team by ensuring strong communication within the team, across the VPRU leadership team, and with VPRU regional and country colleagues.
• Contribute to identifying learning priorities and work with peer global and regional leaders to achieve outcomes.
Resource development and learning uptake
• Contribute to identifying priorities for resource development and ensure that they are responding effectively to the needs identified across field programs.
• Collaborate with the Technical Units, Safeguarding Practice, and the Research & Innovation Unit to develop new or revise existing evidence reviews and advise on new research strategies to enable transformative change in humanitarian contexts.
• In collaboration with relevant regional and country colleagues, support the mentoring, guidance and training of project staff, partners, and stakeholders, on GEDI integration and mainstreaming issues, tools, policies, and practices
• Maintain up-to-date knowledge about available evidence on transformative change interventions and feminist movement building.
• Lead on the development of maturity, uptake and scale frameworks in support of a path for global learning to result in transformed outcomes for clients
• In coordination with GEDI Chief Officer provide structured and evidence-based inputs in support of the tracking of organizational GEDI in Programs commitments of the GEDI Action Plan
Team leadership and management
• Provide regular supervision, guidance and mentoring to direct reports.
• Identify development needs of direct reports and support them to access professional growth opportunities appropriate to their needs and aspirations.
• Maintain open and professional relations with team members, encouraging them to collaborate effectively, promoting team cohesion, and providing oversight and guidance to enable staff to successfully perform in their positions.
• Lead with commitment, integrity and accountability to the IRC’s global standards for professional conduct.
Support business development and grants management
• Coordinate business development support as per strategic priorities and needs expressed across program units and country programs
• Build funding for new areas of investment in safe, inclusive and transformative humanitarian programming
• Work with specialists, program managers and grants colleagues to ensure budgets are managed effectively. This includes managing communication with field programs receiving budget allocations from TU–led grants.
• Support the Senior Director VPRU in staff planning for inclusion and accountability work, and budgeting alongside other Global and Regional leaders.
• Support in donor dialogue and engagement, as related to the CRRD GEDI in programs priorities
• Ensure timely, accurate and good quality reporting
Key Working Relationships:
Position Reports to: Senior Director Violence Prevention and Response Unit and Chief GEDI Officer
Position Directly Supervises: Related advisors, specialists and strategic project staff
Critical internal partnerships:
– Technical Units
– VPRU Deputy Director
– Senior Safeguarding Director and Regional Safeguarding Advisors
– Regional Violence Prevention and response Leads
– VPRU Program Development and Partnerships, policy and Advocacy and MEAL Leads
– Measurement Unit
– GEDI Chief Officer
External:
As needed
Job Qualifications:
• Minimum eight years progressive protection experience in emergency and/or post-conflict contexts, including experience providing remote technical support
• Graduate degree or equivalent in international law, public health, social work, humanities or other related degree
• Specialised degree in Gender Studies, Social Anthropology, Community development a plus
• Demonstrated experience designing, managing, and implementing programs promoting gender equality and social inclusion.
• Strong understanding of how to address gender and social inclusion dynamics in conflict settings and how gender and social inclusion intersects with conflict sensitivity.
• Experience ensuring safety, inclusion and social transformation integration in project design, implementation and M&E required.
• Experience developing and delivering GEDI-themed content in training and education materials as well as focused assessments, training, and organizational capacity-building preferred.
• Ability to navigate politically sensitive subjects and maintain constructive relationships with a diverse group of stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to think strategically and transmit her/his vision to partners and colleagues.
• Experience living and working in complex, conflict-affected environments.
• Professional level English is required. French, Arabic or Spanish would be an advantage.
• Ability to work under deadline pressure with diverse teams.
Working Environment: Standard work environment. Travel up to 25% of time.
Compensation: Posted pay ranges apply to US-based candidates. Ranges are based on various factors including the labor market, job type, internal equity, and budget. Exact offers are calibrated by work location, individual candidate experience and skills relative to the defined job requirements.
US Benefits: The IRC offers a comprehensive and highly competitive set of benefits. All US employees are eligible for sick time, a 403b retirement savings plans: up to 4.5% immediately vested matching contribution, plus an 3-7% additional IRC contribution, and an Employee Assistance Program which is available to our staff and their families to support in times of crisis and mental health struggles. In addition, full-time employees are eligible for 10 US paid holidays, 20-25 paid time off days, disability & life insurance, medical, dental, and vision insurance (employee contribution starting at $135, $7, and $5 per month respectively) and FSA for healthcare, childcare, and commuter costs. Part-time employees are eligible for a proportionate amount of paid time off. These additional benefits apply to employees who work at least 6 months within a 12 month time period.
**Standard of Professional Conduct:**The IRC and the IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in the IRC Way – our Code of Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, Accountability, and Equality.
Commitment to Gender, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion: The IRC is committed to creating a diverse, inclusive, respectful, and safe work environment where all persons are treated fairly, with dignity and respect. The IRC expressly prohibits and will not tolerate discrimination, harassment, retaliation, or bullying of the IRC persons in any work setting. We aim to increase the representation of women, people that are from country and communities we serve, and people who identify as races and ethnicities that are under-represented in global power structures.
