Job Vacancy: Table Top EPRP activation Simulation Nigeria Action Against Hunger – France

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Job Vacancy: Job title: Table Top EPRP activation Simulation Nigeria Action Against Hunger – France

Job description: BACKGROUND

Research has shown that the scale and complexities of disaster events are increasing globally at an unprecedented rate. In the last six months alone, several countries including Nigeria, Pakistan, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Madagascar (all areas where ACF has an operational presence) have been impacted by medium to large-scale disasters. Therefore, as a first step towards increasingly effective emergency response, ACF has set up a baseline tool; the emergency preparedness and response plan (EPRP). This tool is used to analyze risks and hazards, create overall response objectives, and develop action planning aligned with the already assessed ACF capacity in place, with the objective to facilitate organized and well-coordinated actions during an emergency event, in-line with the needs of the affected population, and meeting scale, timeliness, and quality standards. A key action that the Emergency Readiness and Response Unit (ERRU) is encouraging all country offices to adopt is the creation of a national Rapid Emergency Action Team (REACT) to deploy rapidly to the impacted locations within their area of operations. Nigeria is considered as a particularly high-risk country based on various indicators collated by INFORM, and ACAPs, as well as the ACF 2023 Watchlist. The country office (C.O.) has gone through the EPRP process and have already established a REACT. However, since its set-up, the team has struggled to find its footing, including clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of different team members when they are activated for a response (e.g. During the Cholera outbreak in Soot and the recent flooding disaster). Any emergency can be overwhelming, but having the necessary skills is critical to ensure affected populations are reached with agility and speed. With the idea to improve their ways of working and hone their response capacities, the Nigeria country team has included training and simulation as one of its priority objectives for 2023, in line with the ERRU’s priorities for this year. Simulation exercises have been long used by humanitarian practitioners and emergency responders as one of the most effective types of operational training to boost emergency response capacity. The Red Cross/Red Crescent movement and Save the Children, for example are considered leaders in this respect. Studies conducted on their simulation exercises have proven that “simulation learning in combination with traditional classroom experience is more efficient and effective in preparing people to act in a crisis than traditional classroom learning or online learning alone”1 . Simulation exercises have several proved benefits for an emergency response team such as;

• Allowing teams and organizations to use and test operational tools, procedures, and formats to evaluate the real-time use of these systems and the team’s facility/performance with them
• Providing for a controlled environment to put into practice emergency actions that require decision-making and coordination under pressure; while providing a safe space for errors
• Allowing for a more practical test to evaluate the EPRPs designed by country teams, in advance of its activation
• Helping evaluate pre-developed decision-making processes and internal coordination mechanisms.
• Helping to strengthen external coordination reflexes among the teams (reaching out / participating in Clusters and/or other coordination mechanisms)
• Testing how individual participants might react to stressful emergency situations and environments (targeting REACT and Senior Management Team (SMT) members to better understand how they manage their stress, work together, etc.), to ensure that pre-defined processes are supportive of individual and collective needs.
• Providing practical experiences to the deployed team and preparing them for the needs of an emergency response. The ERRU is anticipating that an increasing number of C.O.’s will request for this type of simulation exercise now that the REACTs are more established and C.O.’s are progressing to more advanced stages in their preparedness objectives. Therefore, the ERRU is looking for a consultant to support the completion of simulation objectives for Nigeria in 2023, through the consultative design and completion of a simulation training exercise. The ERRU further hopes that this consultant will support the unit to generalize this training package for future use in other country offices, following the analysis of lessons learned in Nigeria.

OBJECTIVE OF THE CONSULTANCY

The objective of this consultancy is to work with ERRU, Regional Team, and Nigeria focal points, to develop a simulation exercise package for Nigeria’s REACT (focused on a flood + cholera outbreak scenario), to support the facilitation of this operational training in the country, and then to further adapt the methodology into a global tool for all ACF C.O.’s to benefit from in the future, based on lesson’s learned.

Location: Nigeria

Job date: Wed, 12 Jul 2023 22:24:48 GMT

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