Centre for Disaster Protection - Policy Engagement Officer

DAI; London; On-site; GBP 30,000 - 36,000; Part time

Job summary

DAI is seeking a Policy Engagement Officer to enhance the Centre for Disaster Protection's initiatives in disaster risk financing. The successful candidate will collaborate with multidisciplinary teams to deliver impactful communication, engage with policymakers, and foster relationships across sectors, contributing to resilience in vulnerable communities.

Qualifications

• Experience in policy influencing initiatives.
• Understanding of international development and climate change.
• Ability to explain complex data clearly.

Responsibilities

• Support development of engagement strategies with key stakeholders.
• Implement influencing strategies to drive change.
• Monitor opportunities for international engagement.

Skills

Stakeholder mapping

Designing influencing strategies

Excellent communication skills

Job description

Centre for Disaster Protection - Policy Engagement Officer

Join to apply for the Centre for Disaster Protection - Policy Engagement Officer role at DAI

Centre for Disaster Protection - Policy Engagement Officer

Join to apply for the Centre for Disaster Protection - Policy Engagement Officer role at DAI

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Background

The Centre for Disaster Protection works to prevent disasters devastating lives, by helping people, countries, and organisations change how they plan and pay for disasters. We focus on disaster risk financing to help ensure that money and plans are in place before a disaster strikes, so that the poorest and most vulnerable people are better protected. We are committed to work in partnerships across sectors and geographies to drive more impactful and more equitable disaster risk finance that leaves no one behind. Specifically, through a focus on:

• Delivering excellent client outcomes and promoting lasting disaster risk finance expertise. We provide clients with impartial and evidence-based advice, quality assurance and training that meets their needs and drives more effective disaster risk finance.
• Quality evidence and learning. We work to strengthen the evidence base for prearranged financing and document and share what shows the greatest potential to achieve system change.
• Impactful communications and global policy engagement. We seek to engage and influence through evidence-led policy and inclusive policy dialogue that bridges both ‘local to global’ and the humanitarian development climate nexus, targeting the bottlenecks key to effect transformative change of the international crisis financing architecture.
  
  
  

Policy Engagement Officer

Background

The Centre for Disaster Protection works to prevent disasters devastating lives, by helping people, countries, and organisations change how they plan and pay for disasters. We focus on disaster risk financing to help ensure that money and plans are in place before a disaster strikes, so that the poorest and most vulnerable people are better protected. We are committed to work in partnerships across sectors and geographies to drive more impactful and more equitable disaster risk finance that leaves no one behind. Specifically, through a focus on:

• Delivering excellent client outcomes and promoting lasting disaster risk finance expertise. We provide clients with impartial and evidence-based advice, quality assurance and training that meets their needs and drives more effective disaster risk finance.
• Quality evidence and learning. We work to strengthen the evidence base for prearranged financing and document and share what shows the greatest potential to achieve system change.
• Impactful communications and global policy engagement. We seek to engage and influence through evidence-led policy and inclusive policy dialogue that bridges both ‘local to global’ and the humanitarian development climate nexus, targeting the bottlenecks key to effect transformative change of the international crisis financing architecture.
  
  
  

Additionally, we are focused on building effective systems and processes for people and operations that support the Centre to rapidly, yet strategically, scale and grow in a way that supports our people to do their best work through safe challenge, promoting and integrating diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The Centre is funded with UK aid through the UK government. Read more about our strategy (2022-2025) and find out more at www.disasterprotection.org .

The role

We are recruiting a Policy Engagement Officer to support and accelerate the delivery of the Centre’s ambitious workplan.

The Policy Engagement Officer will work closely as part of the Engagement & Evidence team to help deliver an ambitious evidence-led global policy agenda, supported by a partnerships, influencing and engagement strategy. The Policy Engagement Officer will also support coordination with our Evidence and Learning team, Project Leads and other specialist team members within multidisciplinary teams of Centre staff, as well as with external consultants, and partner organisations.

This role will work to support and shape the Centre for Disaster Protection’s engagement in global and regional policy processes and international fora, maintaining and managing key in-house systems and processes for external engagement. That includes a focus on development and climate finance diplomacy and reform and engaging with a broad range of stakeholders, including governments, multilateral agencies, civil society networks, and others.

Specifically, the role will help to translate evidence-led policy insights into actionable engagement and outreach. The ideal candidate will have experience in working with and influencing policy decision makers and demonstrable understanding and knowledge of key intergovernmental processes and multilateral institutions.

The role will be responsible for supporting the Policy Engagement team in initiating and managing strategic engagement initiatives, delivering policy and evidence influencing strategies and working through partnerships, as well as fostering stakeholder relationships.

The Policy Engagement will also have an important part to play in taking forward the team’s ambitious new workplan. This includes scaled up engagement with disaster-exposed communities and frontline responders, including through targeted surveys, dialogues and events. This will, in turn, inform outreach and interaction with governments and other decision-makers in these contexts, as well as wider national and regional processes and bodies. The role will also work on developing and delivering a new flagship event for the Centre for Disaster Protection, convening a unique combination of stakeholders with a through-line focus on how we plan and pay for shocks and more proactively address evolving disaster risks, costs and impacts.

In addition, the Policy Engagement Officer will:

• Uphold the organisation’s values and contribute to a positive organisational culture.
• Help to build the Centre’s external reputation through professional and effective engagement with stakeholders and clients, including at senior levels.
• Contribute to working creatively and collaboratively across teams to solve issues and get things done.
  
  
  

The Policy Engagement Officer will work effectively as part of a multidisciplinary team of Centre staff and consultants, reporting to the Head of Policy Engagement and working closely with the Senior Policy Advisor and our expert Evidence, Communications, Advisory and Training and Operations functions.

The role is ideally suited to someone who enjoys a variety of tasks and working in multidisciplinary teams, with excellent and demonstrable analytical and communications skills, alongside an understanding of how our stakeholders’ both impact and are impacted by global and regional policy agendas.

Role Responsibilities

• Supporting the development and coordination of opportunities for strengthening the Centre’s strategic engagement with key stakeholders and for influencing decision-making.
• Inputting to and implementing influencing strategies that help to drive change at the global and regional -system level, in close coordination with Centre teams.
• Providing policy, influencing and strategic engagement support on agreed priorities, undertaking policy analysis, and monitoring developments in the political and policy landscape, including opportunities to influence emerging debate.
• Distilling and clearly articulating complex messages - providing high-quality written outputs and advancing the Centre’s policy thought-leadership agenda.
• Supporting mapping and engagement with a broad range of internal and external stakeholders across geographies and work areas, including maintaining stakeholder and distribution lists, stakeholder and context analysis and briefing, and identifying opportunities to expand the existing stakeholder base and strategic partners.
• Monitor opportunities for the Centre to engage in and influence international and regional events, including by maintaining and monitoring an in-house engagement calendar, forward look, and co-ordination and planning meetings. Support delegations to international conferences, including through briefing notes and delegate packs, as well as supporting the team in accreditation and registration processes.
• Supporting the Centre’s participation externally in policy forums, meetings, and events, both directly and through supporting and facilitating wider Centre-led events, including collaborating with project managers, technical leads and other relevant contact on event planning and agenda setting
• Support the team in monitoring and evaluating progress towards policy objectives and in-house targets, including agreed Key Performance Indicators.
  
  
  

Skills And Experience

Successful candidates will be able to demonstrate the following skills and experience:

• Confidence in mapping stakeholder relationships and managing and maintaining information resources.
• Experience of designing and delivering impactful influencing strategies.
• A strong understanding of the key actors and policy environment of the international development, climate change or humanitarian architecture. Experience of working on climate negotiations and processes and/or with climate-linked funding streams would be particularly useful.
• Experience in designing and delivering impactful events, roundtables or other relevant forms of collaboration and convening. Ability to work enthusiastically as a collaborative team member.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English.
• Ability to tailor communications to a range of audiences and to explain complex data in digestible, impactful formats.
  
  
  

Person specification

Successful candidates should: The offer

• Demonstrate experience across policy, influencing and engagement initiatives.
• Demonstrate a passion for building resilience and reducing vulnerability in low and middle-income countries and thinking creatively to evidence harder to measure change at systems level.
• Demonstrate willingness to learn key principles, features and functions of disaster risk financing to a level where you can critically engage and challenge.
• While not required, demonstrable understanding or experience of working with governments, decision makers, regional processes or bodies in lower income disaster-exposed countries would be particularly welcome.
• Work collaboratively and excel in building networks and coalitions of support with a broad range of internal and external stakeholders from across sectors and geographies, and a diverse range of professional, cultural, and social backgrounds.
• Demonstrate experience of taking initiative and working proactively and effectively as part of a dynamic, multidisciplinary team in a hybrid working environment.
• Whilst a significant amount of travel is not anticipated, applicants should be willing, if required, to travel to international locations as needed including lower income and fragile, conflict-affected contexts.
• Demonstrate a commitment to ongoing learning, including technical and non-technical skills.
• Uphold the Centre’s values and contribute to a positive organisational culture.
• Build the Centre’s external reputation through managing relations with clients and partners across the development, humanitarian, financial and academic sectors.
• Collaborate effectively with teams of Centre staff and consultants.
  
  
  

This role is expected to be offered on a fixed term contract basis, anticipated to start in August 2025 and continuing to June 2029, with an initial probation period of up to 4 months. The role will be contracted by DAI Global UK (or local partner/representative), who are the Centre’s managing agent.

The position is offered in the first instance as a position based in the UK, Nigeria, or Pakistan. Regular visits to the Centre’s office in the City of London will be required (UK based employees are required to be in the office a minimum of eight days per month). Flexible, part-time, and remote working arrangements will be considered. Applicants for the role must already have the right to work in the UK/Nigeria/Pakistan as relevant.

Other locations of employment may be considered, subject to feasibility. Candidates based elsewhere who fulfil the above skills and experience and person specification criteria and have interest in the role, may contact the Centre on the enquiry e-mail below in the first instance, to enquire whether the role could be offered in their preferred location.

A competitive salary and benefits package will be offered depending on experience. The gross salary range is between £30,000 to £36,000 per annum where the role is based in the UK. The proposed salary will be confirmed at the offer stage.

The Centre is committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace and so we particularly encourage applications from diverse backgrounds that are typically under-represented in this sector and from citizens of countries affected by disasters.

DAI is a global development company with corporate offices in the USA, the UK, the EU, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Palestine, and project operations worldwide. DAI tackles fundamental social and economic development problems caused by inefficient markets, ineffective governance, and instability; it works on the frontlines of global development, transforming ideas into action—action into impact. DAI is committed to shaping a more liveable world.

Application process

Interested applicants should apply via DAI’s recruitment portal , including a concise CV and a supporting statement (no more than 500 words) outlining your motivation for applying (250 words max) and the key qualities you would bring to the role (250 words max).

Any reasonable adjustment requests or questions about the role or the recruitment process should be sent to: [e-mail] (please do not send applications to this email address).

The deadline for receiving applications is 11:59 pm (UK time) on Sunday 20 th of July.

Seniority level

• Seniority level

  Mid-Senior level

Employment type

• Employment type

  Part-time

Job function

• Job function

  Other

• Industries

  International Trade and Development

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