DEPARTMENT PURPOSE: The Program Quality department in Oxfam in Syria brings together a team of thematic advisors to ensure the country program’s strategy is delivered meeting the quality standards established by the overall sectors and Oxfam (CHS, Sphere, etc). Accordingly, the department ensures such standards and learning on the delivery of humanitarian aid in Syria to develop programs and projects according to its mandate, strategy and needs of affected population.
TEAM PURPOSE: The Cash Working Group – HCT (CWG) in Syria is a standalone technical working group to ensure cash and voucher assistance (CVA) programmes in Syria are coordinated and follow a common rationale and qualitative protection-sensitive approach. CVA uses local markets and services to meet the needs of persons affected by the crisis and covers a variety of programs through modalities including vouchers, unconditional and conditional, and restricted and unrestricted cash transfers. This group’s focus will be on common areas for CVA interventions that are multi-sectoral in nature. While the coordination of sectoral CVA is done upon demand and needs in coordination with respective sectors, the CWG will also provide technical advice and guidance for the implementation of CVA. The CWG gathers expert organizations (UN Agencies, RC movement, INGOs, and NGOs), in addition to sector coordinators (as observers). The CWG is for now an informal working group that reports to the Inter-Sector Coordination Group (ISC) (GoS hub).
JOB PURPOSE: Programmatic Co-chairs enable predictable, effective, and accountable cash coordination. They support coordination among cash actors and other sectors, engage actors delivering (or interested in delivering) cash assistance, build capacity, facilitate technical and operational discussions, enable agreement, and
Job profile template– 31.05.2022
encourage the harmonization of approaches, where needed. They are impartial, unbiased, objective, and neutral to promote programmatic and operational priorities that are commonly identified and jointly agreed upon by CWG members in the response and ensure those are integrated into the wider response. This should be done by taking respectful consideration of different views, concerns, mandates, and capacities, seeking to achieve common grounds for a collective cash response while contributing technical as well as coordination expertise. CWG co-chairs are guided by the needs of affected people, operational cash actor’s requirements Inter-Sector Working Group (ISC) guidance.
The Programmatic Co-chair is part of the Program Quality team of Oxfam in Syria as organization elected to co-chair the CWG. As such, s/he will participate in the collective discussions and programmatic decisions to make Oxfam program aligned with quality standards and meeting the needs of affected populations.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES (Technical, Leadership, People and Resource management)
•Enable Cash Coordination and Facilitate Technical Discussion
•Lead on developing a CWG TOR supported by the non-programmatic co-chair to develop. The TOR would be the strategic vision and direction for the CWG, ensuring that its role is aligned with broader humanitarian objectives, organizational mandates, and contextual dynamics.
•Lead on, develop and ensure that a work plan for the CWG is in place that reflects key priorities identified by CWG members.
•Lead on the establishment of the transfer value based on the analysis of relevant data gathered supported with the non-programmatic co-chair.
•Lead on facilitation of all technical and operational discussions between members. This includes fostering collaboration and partnerships among CWG members, as well as with other stakeholders involved in humanitarian.
•Drive and Co-facilitate meetings and enable technical discussions in an inclusive manner. This involves facilitating regular meetings, setting agendas, and ensuring active participation from member organizations.
•Represent the CWG to the ISC to head of sectors and other high-level management from UN Agencies and other stakeholders in the country.
•Support sub-national CWGs or technical Task Teams, develop TORs, establish membership, and endorse outputs This will include capacity building to sub-national sectors members.
•Facilitate technical and operational discussions between members. This includes fostering collaboration and partnerships among CWG members, as well as with other stakeholders involved in humanitarian response.
•Engage diverse international, local, and national actors along with non-programmatic co-chair and ensure discussions can be held in local languages by offering translation services to international actors (and vice versa).
•Co-chair support multiple/ diverse approaches, respecting CWG members’ mandates and capacities together with the non-programmatic co-chair.
•Promote and advocate for coherent, comprehensive, and/ or harmonized approaches like common mechanisms, joint, collaborative, or complementary approaches along with the non-programmatic co-chair.
•Facilitate the development of standard and easy-to-use tools and guidance together with the non-programmatic co-chair.
•Liaise and lead discussions with sector working groups to ensure complementarity and avoid overlaps between sector cash assistance and multi-purpose cash assistance (MPCA) along with the non-programmatic co-chair.
•Engage and build relations with stakeholders including donors, international financial institutions (IFIs), government, humanitarian, and development actors to enable coherence and contextualization of cash response, links between humanitarian and development action, and nexus approaches.
•Engage and coordinate with social protection coordination structure that allows and enables alignment (e.g., Social Protection Working Groups (SPWGs) to ensure cash assistance complements, supports, or strengthens, rather than duplicates, government support, when applicable, along with the non-programmatic co-chair.
•Provide technical inputs and contribute actively to humanitarian or refugee response cycle planning frameworks, when applicable along with the non-programmatic co-chair.

Ensure Reporting, Knowledge and Information Management:
•Co-chair map and provide regular analysis on the delivery of cash assistance across the response along with the non-programmatic co-chair.
•Promote and roll out coverage of cash assistance through information sharing and gap analysis. This may involve sharing best practices, developing tools and guidelines, and offering support in the design, monitoring, and evaluation of cash-based interventions.
•Enable a community of practice to document evidence-based practices and lessons learned.
•Compile evidence to inform interventions and contribute to regional/ global learning.
•Lead on capacity building to sub-national sectors members whilst ensuring that support for sub-national on programmatic CVA issues is in place and well-coordinated.. This may involve sharing best practices, developing tools and guidelines, and offering support in the design, monitoring, and evaluation of cash-based interventions
•Establish connections with global and regional fora e.g. gCAG, CALP network, SPIAC-B in close coordination with the non-programmatic cochair.

ESSENTIAL

• Higher Education in a relevant field (Economics or Development Studies, etc.)
• 3-4 years of experience of coordinating either CWGs or other humanitarian and development working groups, clusters, and sectors in the country or in other contexts with emergency response.
• Demonstrated technical understanding of operational cash issues, challenges, and concerns and trouble shooting.
• 5-7 years of experience and/ or understanding of sectoral and multi-sectoral use of cash.
• Awareness of government, local or development social assistance, programs, systems and/ or policies, and social protection working groups.
• Ability to remain impartial, uphold humanitarian principles, maintain integrity, and avoid pursuing organizational or personal agendas when coordinating/ facilitating discussions.
• Strong interpersonal, communication (verbal/ written), and presentation skills.
• Ability to work and plan at both operational and strategic levels.
• Experience in liaising with technical and senior humanitarian, development actors, private sectors (i.e. Financial Service Providers), governmental actors and donors.
• Demonstrated ability to facilitate discussions, negotiate compromise, and reach agreements.
• Ability to respectfully engage, broker, and/ or facilitate conflict resolution between multiple actors with different approaches, mandates, experiences, backgrounds, nationalities, cultures, sectors, interests, and seniority levels with diverging views and opinions.
• Understanding of humanitarian response architecture, including coordination mechanisms, humanitarian reform, and action, and funding mechanisms (e.g., Humanitarian Programme Cycle – HPC, Central Emergency Response Fund and Flash Appeals, Pooled funds).
• Ability to work under pressure and adapt to an evolving and complex humanitarian context.
• Working knowledge of English.

Essential competencies:

These are the essential criteria an individual needs to be able to deliver the role.

• Self-Awareness
• Strategic Thinking and Judgment
• Relationship building

Desirable

• Certified CALP Trainer will be an asset.
• Arabic skills will be an asset.
• In-depth knowledge of the Syria context and the humanitarian response in the country