Terms of Reference
Short Term Consultant, Communications
Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery
Background
The Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), established in 2006, is a multi-donor partnership and grant-making financing mechanism. The Facility supports on-the-ground technical assistance to help developing countries integrate disaster risk management (DRM) and climate change adaptation into their development strategies, policies and investment programs, including post-disaster recovery and reconstruction.
The GFDRR Secretariat is hosted within the Climate Change Group at the World Bank in Washington D.C. with satellite offices in Brussels and Tokyo. The Secretariat is responsible for awarding and managing grants, reporting on results, and carrying out outreach and partnership development. It also acts as the support hub for a decentralized network of DRM experts in the World Bank and provides a global platform for knowledge-sharing and capacity building.
To support country engagements, GFDRR maintains eight thematic initiatives that provide grant recipients with specialized knowledge and quality assurance in the design and implementation of activities. These initiatives allow GFDRR to collaborate with a broad array of partners, facilitate global engagements and capacity building, and produce innovative knowledge. The thematic initiatives are: the Innovation Lab, Hydromet, Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance (DRFI), Resilient Recovery, Inclusive Community Resilience, Urban Resilience, Safer Schools, and the Small Island States Resilience Initiative (SISRI).
About the Innovation Lab & Understanding Risk Community
GFDRR hosts a team that works to promote open access to risk information (see: https://www.gfdrr.org/innovation-lab). This team supports the use of science, technology, and open data in promoting new ideas and the development of original tools to empower decision-makers in vulnerable countries to strengthen their resilience. The Labs strategy is to build partnerships and communities that utilize open data and open source technology to assist decision-making. Labs activities are designed and implemented in partnership with the World Bank’s regional DRM teams, governments and key international and local partners, which ensures that these initiatives are developed to add value in operational environments.
The team has five main initiatives and projects as follows:
The Understanding Risk (UR) Community is an open and global community in the field of disaster risk identification with representatives from the public and private sector, multilateral organizations, NGOs, academia and civil society. UR holds its global forum every two years with the fifth global forum planned for May 14-18, 2018 in Mexico City. Part of the success of the Forum lies in the communications strategy and outreach to new partners and potential stakeholders.
The Open Data for Resilience Initiative (OpenDRI) brings the philosophies and practices of the global open data movement to the challenges of reducing vulnerability and building resilience to natural hazards and the impacts of climate change. OpenDRI supports World Bank Regional DRM Teams working with client countries on projects tailored to a country’s specific needs and goals in order to build capacity and long-term ownership of open data projects. OpenDRI engages with client governments in three main areas: 1) Sharing Data; 2) Collecting Data; 3) Using Data.
The GFDRR-DFID Challenge Fund promotes the development and use of innovative approaches in local contexts to help better identify changing climate and disaster risk and enable more effective decision-making to build resilience. Through targeted investments in innovation, the Challenge Fund enables communities in more than 20 countries around the globe to move from data to insight to behavior change and thereby build resilience to climate change and natural disasters.
ThinkHazard! is a new web-based tool enabling non-specialists to consider the impacts of disasters on new development projects. While planning and designing projects, users of ThinkHazard! can quickly and robustly assess the level of river flood, earthquake, drought, cyclone, coastal flood, tsunami, volcano and landslide hazard within their project area.
An initiative on Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) for Disaster Risk Management has recently launched to provide support to World Bank operations teams who are interested in utilizing nature-based infrastructure or hybrid solutions. In Fall 2017, the NBS team will launch a web platform and a guidance report on key principles and implementation.
The team also works with local technologists to improve access to data through Code for Resilience and creates and communicates disaster risk assessments through disaster risk profiles.
About the Position
The GFDRR Innovation Lab is looking for a talented writer and digital communications consultant to support the communication needs of the Labs team and the development of communication products. The Consultant will be the primary focal point between the Innovation Lab and the GFDRR communications team. The Consultant must enjoy working in a fast-paced environment with tight deadlines and changing needs, and be able to work with a diverse group of colleagues.
The ideal candidate will be highly organized, enjoy working in a team, but capable of taking on individual tasks and seeing them through to completion in a high-quality and efficient manner. Further, the ideal candidate will possess technical knowledge of the disaster risk management field, or other related fields such as climate change adaptation, open data, geospatial information.
The Labs team produces a wide variety of different types of materials, and the ideal candidate will be able to work within different types of materials and distill key points for communications materials. Examples of the types of work are: flagship reports, e.g. The Making of a Riskier Future plus associated comms releases; blogs, e.g. on models; news appearances, e.g. about Hurricane Harvey; academic journal papers, e.g. on risk assessment.
The position will require working across and coordinating heavily with two teams in GFDRR: the Innovation Lab led currently by Emma Phillips, DRM Specialist, and the GFDRR communications team led by Shaela Rahman, Senior Operations Officer. The Labs team does have another communications consultant who works ad-hoc for the team, with whom the Consultant may liaise.
Duties and Accountabilities
The duties and accountabilities of the Consultant will be separated into two components: 1) Communications activities for the Innovation Lab; and, 2) Communications activities for the 2018 Understanding Risk Forum.
1. Communications activities for the Innovation Lab
- Serve as primary focal point within the Labs team for the GFDRR comms team, attending DRM comms meetings
- Ensure the GFDRR communications team is apprised of all the upcoming launches and projects of the Innovation Lab
- Develop communications strategies for upcoming launches of products / projects
- Draft blogs and feature stories as needed
- Identify interesting and creative opportunities to highlight the work of the Innovation Lab
- Develop a communications strategy for ThinkHazard!, engaging external and internal audiences
- Execute the ThinkHazard! communications strategy
- Support the launch of a report on Risk Communication for Disaster Risk Assessment
- Support the OpenDRI team as needed with upcoming launches
- Provide consultations to other Labs team members to help them understand the breadth and possibilities for different comms outreach products
- Other communications tasks as assigned
2. Communications activities for UR2018
- Development of a communications strategy for UR2018 in conjunction with the GFDRR Comms team to understand the different options and opportunities for internal and external communications
- Implementation of the communications campaign for UR2018 with support from the UR2018 organizing team and GFDRR comms team
- Assist in the development of talking points/briefs for high-level World Bank speakers at the actual event and on media calls prior to the event
- Manage the UR website and Twitter as needed, including creating and updating content, designing and implementing social media campaigns, and tracking and reporting on relevant web and social media analytics;
- Writing and editing blogs, World Bank feature stories and press releases around UR2018 as determined in the communications strategy
- Working with the GFDRR Comms team to publish blogs, feature stories and press releases
- Drafting and copy-editing conference materials, including publications, hand-outs, and brochures
- Helping set up/man the GFDRR booth
- Other communications tasks as assigned
Selection Criteria
- BA (MA a plus) in Communications/Journalism, English, International Affairs, or other related field and 3-5 years of experience in a similar role
- Demonstrated technical knowledge of the disaster risk management field, or other related fields such as climate change adaptation, open data, geospatial information
- Strong writing skills; able to prepare and edit communication products under minimum supervision, and develop drafts in a clear, concise style
- Experience working with html and content management systems, including WordPress
- Demonstrated working knowledge and application of digital and social media communications principles
- Competency in Hootsuite or other social media management tools
- Ability to take initiative and produce high-quality deliverables within short deadlines
- Experience working on high level international events/campaigns
- Experience in project management
- Competency in design software including the Adobe Suite a plus
- Ability to do data visualization/simple infographics is a plus
Duration, Location and Reporting
The assignment will start with 30 days with a possibility of extension until end of fiscal year (June 2018). The Consultant will be based in Washington, D.C. The Consultant will report directly to Emma Phillips, Disaster Risk Management Specialist, with close coordination with Simone Balog, Disaster Risk Management Analyst and lead organizer of UR2018.
To apply
To apply please send your CV, cover letter and writing sample to Simone Balog (sbalog@worldbank.org) by Sept. 20 at 5pm EST.
Organization: GFDRR
Deadline to Apply: September 20, 2017