Department: Inclusive Humanitarian Action team

Contract: The initial contract will be up to 12 months, renewable subject to funding availability.

Location: Turkey, with travel.

Reports to: Turkey-Syria Earthquake Response Manager

HelpAge and Strategy 2030 – delivering real impact for older people

HelpAge International works with partners and a diverse global network of more than 171 organizations across 90 countries, supporting millions of older people to live safe, dignified and healthy lives. Through our partnership and collaborations, we work to ensure the inclusion of older people across society and strive to deliver a just and fair world for everyone, whatever their age. Our work is driven by our desire to deliver real impact for older people, to be inclusive, to work in partnership and to learn from our shared experience.

Our 2030 strategy Ageing in a Just World sets out how we will work together to shape the future we all share. By working together we aim to help inspire a movement for change and through ensuring all our work promotes older people’s wellbeing, dignity and voice, we can transform the lives of older people now and in the future.

As part of our 2030 strategy we have a continued commitment to inclusive humanitarian action, supporting older people and their families at a time of crisis.

Turkey-Syria Earthquake Crisis

On 6th February 2023, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit near Gaziantep, in South-East Turkey, near the North-West Syrian border, followed by a second deadly 7.5 magnitude earthquake hit near Ekinozu, causing catastrophic destruction, mass displacement, and devastating numbers of fatalities, missing persons, and injuries. HelpAge has been working for several years with local partners who are present in the affected areas and is scaling up an emergency life-saving response to urgently support older people and their families in the affected areas, with an age-inclusive, gender and disability inclusive program. Our response plan includes health support, cash/NFI assistance, shelter support, Protection and Mental Health and Psychosocial First Aid.

We are seeking a passionate, professional and experienced candidate to support our response to the Turkey-Syrian earthquake crisis (covering NW Syria), someone who thrives in collaborating with others (inside HelpAge International and beyond) and who can work in agile ways and across boundaries.

This position will be part of the Inclusion Technical Working group which is part of the Protection Cluster in NW Syria and will promote age and disability inclusion within the working group to ensure that the needs and concerns of older people are identified and addressed as part of a wider commitment to the delivery of an inclusive humanitarian response, and based on the RPA findings as per the exercise led by the Protection Cluster between February 22 and March 3,2023.

Key areas for impact/influence and responsibilities
These outline the broad areas of responsibility in the role, but in collaboration with your humanitarian colleagues and in line with the protection cluster Inclusion Working Group ToRs and work plan you will be able to shape and design specific activities that are relevant at any point in time. We want you to work creatively to deliver impact and respond to relevant opportunities. You will:

Coordination Role

Assist in coordinating and supporting the inclusion working group members to implement the activities in accordance with the jointly defined strategy.
Promote the active engagement of interested humanitarian actors to include older people and people with disabilities in the response planning throughout the cluster mechanism.
Technical Role

• Analyze the Rapid Protection Assessment (RPA) findings to establish prioritization criteria under the established categories.
• Map and assess inclusion of older people in the assessment and planning of humanitarian action.
• Develop suitable age inclusion tools and procedures in line with the Humanitarian Inclusion Standards, the local context and disseminate them to promote an overall inclusive response.
• Design and create relevant trainings and dispense them across the protection and other clusters and to relevant partners at field level.
• Provide technical inputs to documentation, training modules, tools and other resources produced by the Inclusion Technical working group.
• Take proactive responsibility by staying informed about development and good practices in age inclusion and mainstreaming.
• Closely monitor the local context and provide updates on contextual changes to promote informed decision making and create linkages with other clusters like WASH, Health etc.
• Promote the meaningful participation and involvement of older persons with and without disabilities including Older People Associations (OPAs) to make their voices heard.
• Support and monitor the data collection exercises, assessments, and surveys through promoting the use of age inclusive tools.
• Share information and good practices on age inclusion.
• Let's talk about you
You will be someone with:

• Field and programmatic experience in humanitarian work in conflict/peacebuilding environments in a variety of contexts.
• Strong understanding of intersectionality analysis and age and gender transformative actions.
• Strong working knowledge of the humanitarian coordination system and humanitarian architecture and experience working with partners and other international stakeholders (UN, INGOs).
• Protection and inclusion background including experience in inclusion of at-risk groups ideally in humanitarian context- and older people, and persons with disabilities.
• Good written and spoken English.
• Strong interpersonal and representation skills and previous experience of networking with other humanitarian organizations.
• Proven experience in capacity building.
• Ability to work in a fast paced and stressful environment.
Desirable

• Fluent spoken and written Arabic is preferred.
• Previous experience of working in Turkey and/or NW Syria.
Equal Opportunities

HelpAge International is committed to creating an inclusive working environment, promoting and providing equal opportunities and respecting diversity in employment. We welcome applications from all suitably qualified individuals regardless of their age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.

Safeguarding

Everyone has a role in creating and sustaining a safe and respectful working environment, where no one comes to any harm or is maltreated. At HelpAge we take our responsibilities very seriously and will take action against wrongdoing. We will do everything we can to ensure that we do not engage people that pose a safeguarding risk and will undertake criminal record checks as required.

Diversity & Inclusion

HelpAge International is dedicated to creating a diverse and inclusive environment for all its employees/consultants while extending the culture of inclusion into our work.

We believe that our workforce should reflect the wide diversity of the communities we serve, and that diverse voices should be elevated and intentionally integrated into our work. We embrace difference and diversity of identity, experience, and thought, and actively strive for inclusive behaviors across our organization and work regardless of gender, race, disability, age, nationality, ethnic/national origin, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, marital status, pregnancy, social status, and political beliefs.

How to apply
To apply for a job at HelpAge, please submit the following documents including your availability and work permit status for Turkey:

A cover letter, setting out how you meet the requirements of the job profile.
Your current curriculum vitae (3 pages maximum)
Three referees, including your most recent employer
To be considered, please read the job description to find out more information and then email your application to helpAge-hr@helpage.org before the closing date.

Closing date: Thursday, 30 March 2023 at 24:00 (GMT+1). Early expression of interest is encouraged as Application will be reviewed on a rolling basis due to the urgency to fill the position.

Important Message: Please ensure that you remove personal information including your date of birth, age, gender and marital status from your CV. Please do not include any photographs.

Job Email id: helpAge-hr(at)helpage.org