Emergency Response Roster - Safeguarding Advisor

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, inspired by our Christian faith.

Come join our 33,000+ staff working in nearly 100 countries and share the joy of transforming vulnerable children’s life stories!

Employee Contract Type:

Job Description:

Country location to be determined based on response.

Please submit your Cover Letter and CV in English.

Children’s lives can change in an instant in the wake of war, disasters and humanitarian emergencies. We see how vulnerable they are and how much they need our protection.

Joining our Emergency Response Roster means you can be a part of our response, providing immediate support when disaster strikes.

Here's where you come in:

As a Safeguarding Advisor in a Response, you will provide in-depth safeguarding expertise and support to Response Management and key Functions, to ensure safeguarding is embedded in the culture and operations of a Response from the beginning and appropriately through every phase. They actively support Management to identify and mitigate safeguarding risk while equipping staff to become safeguarding champions for their teams.  They provide technical safeguarding guidance and capacity building to the Response on all aspects of safeguarding compliance, safer programming and safeguarding culture building in alignment with WV’s Child and Adult Safeguarding Policy. They ensure survivor-centred safeguarding incident response, and they coordinate with and contribute to the PSEA Network to facilitate local, national, and sector-wide safeguarding collaboration and learning.

Key Responsibilities:

Develop and monitor safeguarding action and risk management plan

• In collaboration with Management and key functions, develop and monitor Safeguarding Action Plan for the Response, prioritizing the adoption, contextualisation and implementation of WV’s Child and Adult Safeguarding Policy.
• Lead staff in conducting a Safeguarding Risk Assessment and creating a risk management plan, ensuring safeguarding risk is documented in Response Risk Register.
• Document Leadership decisions and rationale related to safeguarding risk management, ensuring Response Risk Register is updated accordingly.
• Update Safeguarding Action Plan incrementally (depending upon Response Phase) to ensure it appropriately reflects and links to safeguarding risk management plan.

Support Leadership to establish a safeguarding culture

• Provide Response Leadership with key messages and resources that enable them to build a healthy culture of safeguarding.
• Develop and document a plan with Response Leadership that articulates specific actions the Response Director, SMT and other Managers will take to create and nurture a safeguarding culture, incorporate into Safeguarding Action Plan.
• Brief and advise Response Director and SMT on Safeguarding Risk on an incremental basis, highlighting key issues for decision-making.

Establish a functioning safeguarding training and capacity building system

• Contextualise safeguarding and PSEA orientation and training materials for staff, interns, volunteers, contractors and visitors and socialise with relevant department heads.
• Conduct or coordinate safeguarding training with all staff on a quarterly basis (in-person, skills-based training preferred).
• Assess safeguarding capacity of staff and affiliates and coordinate function-specific safeguarding capacity building.
• Develop and oversee implementation of a needs-based, function-specific capacity building plan.
• Participate in partner due diligence, safeguarding assessment and incorporate capacity building plans for safeguarding.
• Ensure partners either receive safeguarding training from WV or their own organisations.
• Build partner’s safeguarding capacity per the partner capacity building plan.

Ensure community-based accountability mechanisms are appropriately designed to raise awareness of, detect and escalate safeguarding issues, in collaboration with Accountability

• Develop or contextualise child-friendly and accessible safeguarding/PSEA awareness raising materials for communities, including information on expected behaviour (per safeguarding behavioural protocols) and how to report violations (leveraging interagency PSEA resources as appropriate).
• Collaborate with PSEA Network to ensure inter-agency reporting and response mechanism is established and functioning.
• Ensure integration of WV’s accountability mechanisms into PSEA Network accountability mechanisms.
• Train MEAL and field staff on how to identify and escalate safeguarding incidents from community complaints, feedback and interactions.
• Enter safeguarding allegations into Ethics Point, including those escalated from community-based complaints mechanisms within 24 hours.

Safeguarding incident management and investigations

• Develop Safeguarding Incident Preparedness Plan (SIPP) and train relevant staff.
• Train Safeguarding Incident Management Team on their role including inter-agency engagement and donor reporting requirements (in alignment with WV’s Child and Adult Safeguarding Policy).
• Manage Level 2 and Level 3 safeguarding incidents according to global protocols, in alignment with SIPP, in collaboration with Incident Management Team (IMT) with accountability to the WVI’s Safeguarding Unit.
• Ensure L1 safeguarding incidents are referred to the appropriate coordination and response mechanisms (e.g. CPAoR).
• Develop incident investigation plans as needed in coordination with WVI Safeguarding Unit.
• Coordinate or conduct investigations as planned; participate in inter-agency/joint investigations as needed.
• Identify L3 case managers who will ensure all survivor wishes are understood, that they receive desired support, and that incident management is survivor centred at every stage.
• Provide safeguarding incident updates, reports, and documentation on Ethics Point within deadlines (target closure <90 days).

Coordinate and contribute to sector-wide safeguarding through the PSEA Network and other national or local coordination bodies

• Actively participate in PSEA Network meetings and working groups.
• Collaborate with PSEA Network on crafting and monitoring Safeguarding Risk Assessment.
• Coordinate PSEA/safeguarding community-level awareness raising with PSEA Network and establish joint accountability mechanisms.

Meet minimum quality standards and support improvement, reflection, learning and innovation

• Complete Response’s annual Safeguarding Update Report or contribute to FO Safeguarding Update Report (National Cat I, II, or III Response) and monitor progress on compliance on an incremental basis.
• Analyse progress on safeguarding action plan and quality safeguarding implementation and use learning to continue good practices, fill gaps and improve quality safeguarding implementation.
• Promote the development of innovations in PSEA and safeguarding by building on learnings and evidence of good practice, informed by the unique challenges and needs of the context.

Knowledge, Skills and Experience:

Required Education, training, license, registration, and/or Certification

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in a GBV, Child Protection, Legal, Human Resources or other Child Rights-related field, or field/practical experience working with situations of policy formation, guidance and implementation.

Required Professional Experience

• Technical skills:  direct programming or management experience in child protection in emergencies, prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA), gender-based violence (GBV) or safeguarding 

• Experience: 5 years’ + experience in overseeing child protection, PSEA, GBV, or safeguarding work – preferably in a humanitarian context

• Other: strong relationship building/network capacity, excellent communication skills, spiritual maturity in Christian faith, ability to influence, innovative, and proactive personality. 

Required Language(s):

• Effective written and verbal communication in English. Other UN languages such as French, Arabic, Spanish, and Portuguese, are preferred.

Required travel and/or work environment accommodations.

• Ability to travel to/within domestically and internationally as required.

• Work hours are often in excess of 12 hours per day during difficult periods of the response. 

• Responses are often mounted in insecure or natural disaster-prone contexts, which may disrupt normal work patterns and generate staff safety issues.

• Work and housing environments may at times be well below normal standards in terms of facilities, equipment, food availability and hygiene.

Preferred Experience, Knowledge and/or other Qualifications

• Strong computer and knowledge management skills, including ability to learn new platforms quickly.

• Critical thinking skills to relate to work performed to broader business context.

• Hostile Environment Awareness Training (HEAT) or equivalent security training certificate.

Applicant Types Accepted: