Evidence to Action Specialist, Climate at International Rescue Committee (IRC)

Job Description

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The International Rescue Committee is a global humanitarian aid, relief and development nongovernmental organization.

About Job

The IRC’s Airbel Impact Lab designs, tests, and scales life-changing, cost-effective solutions for people affected by conflict and disaster. By applying deep technical expertise and field experience with a range of skills from the behavioural sciences, human-centered design, research, and multi-disciplinary problem-solving in humanitarian contexts, we work to develop breakthrough solutions that combine creativity and precision, flexibility and expertise, and a desire to think afresh with the experience and reputation of a large-scale implementing organization.

The IRC supports people affected by crisis or disaster to be healthier, safer, better educated, economically secure, and more powerful because of the work that we do. To achieve this goal, IRC is committed to being outcome-focused, evidence-based and evidence-generating. Making evidence-informed decisions about programming and research investments is essential for achieving our programmatic goals and is a priority as per IRC’s new strategy (Strategy ).

Job Overview: 

The IRC is initiating a project funded by The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) on strengthening humanitarian response to the climate crisis by providing research-based recommendations on effective climate-smart interventions and approaches—across intervention areas in Health, Water and Sanitation, Protection, Livelihoods/Cash and Education. As part of this project the Evidence to Action (E2A) team will conduct a rapid landscape review of climate interventions as well as build a robust evidence gap map (EGM). The purpose of this process will be to map and analyze existing technical intervention approaches, which are well established and cost-effective, and where there are outstanding questions regarding intervention effectiveness. We will focus on evidence from conflict-affected and fragile contexts affected by climate change, such as the Sahel, Horn of Africa and/or Southeast Asia.

The E2A Climate Specialist, under the mentorship of Senior Advisor, E2A will lead the execution of these products.

Main functions: 

Be responsible for the development of the landscape review and EGM:

 Collaborate with the Climate Advisor and E2A team to define the vision, theory of change and strategy for this work stream  Support the E2A Senior Advisor to resolve scope of the work and engage with thought partners and technical authorities.  Complete the review and EGM; including protocol development, systematic searching, screening and coding, data analysis, critical appraisal, mapping and evidence synthesis.  Hire and lead additional support personnel to advance evidence synthesis work, as needed  Make use of technology and machine learning approaches for improved speed, quality and accessibility of the products.  Identify and consolidate programmatic learning on climate-adapted programming across IRC countries

Support in communication and dissemination of evidence and learning:

 Support the dissemination of the project results.  Support evidence translation to be used in resource packs developed by the project team.  Participate and share in learning and exchange sessions/events.

Position Requirements:

 Master’s Degree in Social Sciences, Development Studies, and Political Science, Humanitarian Studies, Economics or related fields required.  University-level training in quantitative and/or mixed-methods research required.  3-4 years’ experience in primary or secondary research required; preferred experience developing literature or systematic reviews, evidence synthesis products or evidence gap-maps (EGMs).  Experience in technical/thematic areas of climate change and climate-smart humanitarian/development programming preferred.  Strong project and time management skills.  Strong communication skills, both written and oral.  Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to work across multiple teams.  Strong customer service orientation.  Proficiency in English (written and spoken) is required, proficiency in French or Arabic a plus.