Crisis Anticipation and Risk Finance Meal Advisor

Save the Children UK has an exciting opportunity for a **MEAL Adviser **to join our** Start Network **to support the development of project level collection of evidence and learning from anticipation, early action and risk financing initiatives.

**About Us**

Start Network is an independent charity made up of more than 80 aid agency members across five continents, including international, national and local organisations. Our aim is to deliver more effective emergency aid, harnessing the power and knowledge of the network to make faster and better decisions to help people affected by crises. We advocate for radical change in the global aid system so that the world can deal better with the humanitarian challenges of today, and of the future. Our work focuses on three areas to change the system:

- Localisation - shifting power to those closest to the front line to enable more effective and appropriate responses.
- New forms of financing - providing fast, early, and dependable funding, to help communities to become more resilient to crises.
- Collective innovation - testing new ways of working and sharing learning and expertise to build a more effective humanitarian system.

The Start Platform maintains a strong relationship with Save the Children as the grant custodian of many of the Start Network's programmes. The Crisis Anticipation and Risk Financing Team is the larger of Start Network programmes team, it is hosted by Save the Children UK as part of the Humanitarian Department and works closely with colleagues in the Start Platform.

We believe that advanced preparedness and early action is essential in responding to humanitarian situations today. By anticipating these events and using forecast information it enables us to consider innovative financing approaches, to better prepare for and respond to these situations. To do this we have been building and adapting systems and processes to enable our members to act before a crisis turns in to a disaster, for example through the anticipation alerts of the Start Funds, which has been successfully used by our member to implement early action since 2016.

**About the role**

You will support the development of project level collection of evidence and learning from anticipation, early action and risk financing initiatives, with a larger focus on impact of Start Network's newest finance mechanism, Start Ready.

You will provide advice and technical guidance for learning approaches to anticipation, early action and risk financing across the Start Network Members. You will work closely with the Learning and Research Advisor (within the Evidence and Learning Team) helping to ensure consistency of approach for learning from anticipation, early action and risk financing initiatives.

**In this role, you will**:
**Technical Advice***
- Develop and implement systems to generate and use data on the value of anticipation, forecasting and risk financing including collating evidence from members from the Start Funds anticipation alerts and other mechanisms
- Responsible for developing or supporting the delivery of donor related M&E requirements, including logframe development and providing data to show progress towards results
- Responsible for annual reporting of progress of Start Ready and Disaster Risk Finance Systems in the different countries of operation, and Anticipatory Action alerts / initiatives, as well as direct reporting on specific projects.
- Drive the design of appropriate MEAL frameworks and methodologies to produce impact evaluations on Start Network's newest finance mechanism, Start Ready, to determine the effectiveness of the system to mitigate the impact of climate-related events on affected populations.
- Support quality assurance of analytical methods in anticipation, early action and risk financing initiatives and provide advice in the development of initiatives across the Start Network
- Responsible for developing data that can be used by the Start Ready Governance Committee to inform Start Ready decision-making
- Complete the framework for quality assurance of Disaster Risk Finance
- Contribute to the design and implementation of specific anticipation, early action and risk financing initiatives
- Provide strategic support where necessary for the development of learning approaches for anticipation windows for national Start Funds
- Supervise and support the annual post-season learning reviews of the various Disaster Risk Financing systems

***Communications**
- Create compelling communications products showcasing learning you have generated, through a variety of media
- Work with the Start Communications and Digital Team and the Start Programmes Communications Manager to ensure visibility, awareness, and learning, on the role and use of forecast-based information for anticipatory responses.
- Support the communications team in disseminating learning around anticipation, early action and risk financing

**Network Development**
- Contribute to the c