Early Warning and Early Action (Anticipatory Action) Coordinator

About the Ethiopian Red Cross Society

The Ethiopian Red Cross Society (ERCS) was established in 1935 and is one of the oldest and largest humanitarian organizations in Ethiopia. ERCS provides services to communities affected by natural and manmade disasters through the provision of emergency responses, ambulance and first aid, family reunification, essential drugs, water and sanitation, and other humanitarian services. ERCS also runs disaster risk reduction programs with the aim of creating resilience households and communities. Currently the ERCS has a structure consisting of 12 Regional Offices, 34 Zonal Branches and 131 District/Woreda Branches, 599 Woreda Red Cross Committee and 5871 Kebele Red Cross committees.

ERCS also runs disaster risk reduction programs relating to food security, climate change adaptation, livelihood diversification, and institutional capacity building interventions, with the aim of creating resilience households and communities. ERCS works in partnership with the Ethiopian Government, International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC), International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), partnering National Societies, members, volunteers and the communities we serve.

Job Summary

The Ethiopian Red Cross Society (ERCS) is seeking a highly motivated and experienced EWEA coordinator to enhance its capacity in Early Warning and Early Action (EWEA) as part of its anticipatory action strategy. The Coordinator will play a critical role in strengthening ERCS’s capabilities in developing, validating, and implementing early warning systems, improving risk analysis, ensuring timely and effective early action interventions and support all anticipatory action and locally-led adaptation projects. This role will also provide management, guidance and technical oversight for the Early Warning System across all and particularly the ongoing Disaster Preparedness project funded by DG ECHO throughout the project cycle to ensure start up, implementation and close out are in line with ERCS quality principles and standards, donor guidelines and best practices in DRM.

The role requires strong technical expertise in disaster risk management and climate science combined with practical field experience in early warning dissemination and community-based climate risk assessment and early action.

Key Responsibilities

1. Strengthening Early Warning Systems

• Provide technical guidance on the development, validation, and operationalization of early warning triggers for different hazards (e.g., drought, epidemics, floods).
• Work with other technical team members of Government, ERCS, Partner National Societies and IFRC to localize at regional levels the existing early action protocols (EAPs) for floods, drought and epidemics.
• Dissemination of EAPs, simulation of EAPs, and updating the EAPs aligned to the simulation or activation lessons learnt
• Support the integration of meteorological and hydrological data into ERCS’s early warning and early action frameworks.
• Develop and enhance tools for forecasting and risk assessment tailored to local contexts.
• Regularly access, analyze forecast information from different sources and provide timely, adequate quality advisories to ERCS senior management, project coordinators and other technical staffs to make the necessary action to reduce the negative impacts of predicted events.
• Act as a technical focal person for ERCS in early warning and forecasting.
• Establish effective coordination mechanisms with the Ethiopian Meteorology Institute, EDRMC, other government ministries, departments, and other key stakeholders to ensure data sharing and joint analysis.
• Actively participate in Early Warning, Early Action related coordination mechanisms including sub technical working groups on AA and sub technical working group on early warning at national level.
• Work closely with EDRMC and UNOCHA to strengthen national, regional and local disaster risk management system to improve coordination and harmonization of the anticipatory action and early response as follows;
• Formation and capacity building of regional anticipatory action technical working groups in the targeted regions
• Updating Woreda Disaster Risk Profiles in targeted regions.
• Conduct an assessment on early warning systems with active participation of community members in the targeted regions and woredas and develop a guiding document for dissemination of early warning messages.

2. Enhancing Early Action and Anticipatory Action Capacities

• Strengthen ERCS’s anticipatory action mechanisms, ensuring that early warnings translate into timely and effective community-level actions.
• Train ERCS staff, volunteers, and community members on forecast interpretation, early action planning, decision-making processes and anticipatory action field level operation.
• Support the pre-positioning of resources and contingency planning to enable rapid response based on forecasts.

3. Research, Innovation, and Learning

• Conduct research and analysis on the effectiveness of early warning systems and early action interventions.
• Explore innovative approaches to improve risk communication and community engagement in early warning dissemination.
• Document lessons learned and best practices to inform ERCS’s future strategies and contribute to global knowledge sharing on anticipatory action.

4. Capacity Building and Partnership Development

• Generally, provide technical assistance and mentoring to ERCS staff and volunteers on EWEA methodologies & AA initiatives.
• Design and roll out trainings to ERCS staff and volunteers on anticipatory action
• Design and roll out trainings to anticipatory action technical working groups at national and regional levels on anticipatory action and also on multihazard contingency planning
• Design and roll out trainings to the woreda and kebele level ready groups on early warning systems.
• Foster partnerships with national and international organizations working in anticipatory action, climate resilience, and disaster risk management.

Reporting to: – Disaster Risk Management Department

Terms of employment: – Contract for one year

Place of Work: Addis Ababa (with field travel as required)

Salary: – Attractive and Negotiable

Qualification Requirements:

• Master’s or first degree in Disaster Risk Management, Information Technology, Project Management, GIS, Statistics and related field
• 8/10 relevant work experience in early warning systems, anticipatory action, or disaster risk reduction, preferably with a humanitarian organization.
• Proven experience in coordinating and managing early warning early action activities in humanitarian or development contexts.
• Proven experience in developing hazard contingency plans, early action protocols/advisories and integrating early warnings into disaster preparedness frameworks.
• Experience in mentoring, coaching, facilitation, and training applying adult learning principles and practices.
• Experience and skills in networking and relations with donors, peer organizations and civil society partners.
• Proficient in MS Office packages (Excel, Word, PowerPoint), Web Conferencing Applications, information and budget management systems, knowledge-sharing networks.
• Experience in community-based disaster risk reduction and working directly with vulnerable communities.
• Excellent coordination and partnership-building skills with government agencies, meteorological institutions, and humanitarian actors.
• Strong communication and training skills, with the ability to convey complex technical concepts to non-specialist audiences.
• Proficiency in GIS, remote sensing tools, and data visualization platforms is an advantage.
• Fluency in English is mandatory.
• Background in impact-based forecasting and risk-informed early action strategies.
• technical expertise in meteorological forecasting, climate modeling, and data analysis for early warning applications.