Type: Individual Consultant - National Cash and Voucher Assistance and Social Protection Coordinator
Duty Station: Colombo, Sri Lanka
Closing Date: 21 August 2024, midnight Sri Lanka time (GMT +5:30)
UNFPA is the lead UN agency for delivering a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled. UNFPA’s new strategic plan (2022-2025) focuses on three transformative results: to end preventable maternal deaths; end unmet need for family planning; and end gender-based violence and harmful practices.
Since 2016, as part of the Grand Bargain, UNFPA joined donors, other UN agencies and NGOs in its commitment to scaling up high quality, well-coordinated Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) that maximizes results for women, girls, and youth during crises, leaving no one behind. UNFPA issued corporate commitments and guidelines on CVA in 2021 and started to scale-up the integration of CVA across its different programmes. UNFPA is also uniquely positioned as both an operational UN agency, working closely with local and national partners, and as the coordination lead of the Gender-Based Violence Area of Responsibility (GBV AoR) and national GBV coordination groups to promote quality CVA.
In Sri Lanka, UNFPA has been including cash assistance in the Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) programming of its 2022 and 2023 emergency response to the economic crisis in the country, focusing on providing timely assistance to enable pregnant women to access SRH services and items. Leveraging its lead role of the GBV sub-cluster, UNFPA Sri Lanka has also been active on GBV risk mitigation in cash and vouchers programming through collaboration with the national cash working group.
UNFPA is one of the UN agencies with solid entry points for linkages with Social Protection due to its dual Development and Humanitarian mandate. UNFPA has entry points with different Ministries (Ministry of Health, of Women and Child Affairs, etc) than some of the other actors (e.g. Welfare Board, etc), bringing on the option of linkages with other schemes as well, and works very closely with local and community-based partners when it comes to Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) and Gender-Based Violence (GBV) prevention and response.
UNFPA Sri Lanka is part of the national working group on Social Protection and has positioned itself as one of the UN agencies providing key advice to the development of the Government’s new social protection scheme “Aswesuma” (spinning off for previous Samurdhi), particularly on thematics such as gender-responsive social protection, on the need to address comprehensive sexual reproductive health, among others.
Under the overall supervision of the UNFPA Humanitarian Development Nexus Specialist, the National Cash and Voucher Assistance and Social Protection Coordinator (IC) supports the design, implementation, coordination, monitoring and evaluation of the UNFPA CVA programmes. The incumbent ensures that cash and vouchers are implemented according to standards and best practices. S/he supports the implementing partners in the implementation of CVA. The national CVA Coordinator supports the assessment of the opportunities and challenges for the CO on CVA according to contextual and programmatic changes, monitors the impact of programmes and documents best practices and successful outcomes. The incumbent will also represent UNFPA in the cash coordination platforms in country. In addition, the incumbent will be supervised by the National Programme Analyst on Population and Ageing for the coordination and implementation of programmes related to National Social Protection.
The National CVA and Social Protection Coordinator will be responsible for the following tasks:
CVA Strategies, Policies and Capacity-building
- Support the development and strengthening of UNFPA Sri Lanka CVA approaches, operational arrangements and procedures in country.
- Support and collaborate with technical colleagues to mainstream and increase the use of CVA in GBV in Emergencies, SRH in Emergencies, and access to dignity items, and other, in their relevant humanitarian-development programming and strategies.
- Provide ongoing CVA capacity building and coaching to technical specialists (GBV, SRH, Humanitarian, Operations/Finance, etc.).
- Identify opportunities and develop recommendations for a more systematic mainstreaming of CVA across UNFPA’s programmatic interventions in the country.
- Assess the impact of UNFPA Sri Lanka CVA programmes, their technical strengths and weaknesses and generate data for evidence-based decisions.
- Support the Country Office with CVA-related donor reporting requirements, contribute to knowledge management products, program development and resource mobilization.
Technical Support and Implementation of CVA
- Lead on the analysis and feasibility of using CVA, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the CVA within programmes, as per context-specificities.
- Collate and review information on financial infrastructure and available delivery mechanisms and advise on related opportunities and constraints.
- Develop an action plan and timetable for all UNFPA Sri Lanka programmes using CVA.
- Coordinate and facilitate planning and budgeting for implementing partners work plan development.
- Provide CVA technical assistance and advice to implementing partners.
- Support the establishment of standardized data management, data sharing and data protection arrangements. And support on communication plans with beneficiaries.
- Together with the other technical colleagues involved, ensure adequate and timely follow up with implementing partners on activities implemented at the field level.
- Support the office’s monitoring process for CVA, with collection, use and monitoring of baselines, standards and indicators to measure and analyze performance, as well as support for impact research depending on opportunities at CO level.
- Draft, review and provide technical feedback for CVA related reports and proposals.
- Lead on CO compliance with UNFPA CVA guidelines (risks analysis, data protection, CVA checklist, etc).
- Support with the documentation, application and dissemination of best practices and lessons learned.
Coordination of CVA
- Coordinate inter-agency activities on CVA, including representing UNFPA at the Cash Working Group meetings and help create linkages with sector/cluster plans and programmes, where applicable.
- Coordinate the work on GBV risk mitigation in cash programming more specifically through the lead of the GBV Sub-Cluster and in collaboration with the national Cash Working Group.
Social Protection
- Actively engage in the Social Protection Working group.
- Provide advice to Government counterparts on gender-inclusive social protection, on the Do No Harm, protection and accountability when using CVA, esp. after a shock, and/or strengthen their capacity in some technical areas (targeting, risk analysis, M&E, etc), as may be relevant.
- Advocate for the inclusion of those not accessing social assistance, particularly women and adolescent girls.
- Coordinate and support delivery of the work on the Family Development Plan
- Coordinate with the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and UN agencies.
- Propose pilots and initiate funding proposals as may be relevant.
- Make intentional linkages between UNFPA CVA and social protection initiatives (complementing, aligning, stimulating improvements, etc).
Please refer to the ToR for further details.