The goal of Habitat for Humanity’s Puerto Rico Recovery Program is to address systemic barriers to achieving household and community resilience in Puerto Rico post hurricanes Irma and Maria. The focus of the program will be capacity building for homeowners and builders; repairs, reconstruction, and new home construction for disaster survivors; a tenure referral system; and assessments, advocacy, green building strategies and economic development supporting each part of the program.
The program’s capacity building workstream will focus on enhancing the capacity of actors in the housing sector in Puerto Rico to reach scale through building back safer and with resiliency in response to the tremendous need at hand. This component is crucial for both homeowners and builders to understand safer building techniques while increasing resiliency. Habitat plans to deliver on this goal of increasing knowledge and ability through direct implementation and via strategic partnerships.
The Interim Capacity Building manager will assist in the rapid scale up of Habitat’s recovery program in Puerto Rico. This position will be responsible for leading the development of a strategy and the creation of a capacity-building plan that will focus on increasing the knowledge of homeowners as well as the knowledge, ability and volume of tradespeople working in the sector.
- Identify and conduct mapping of key government, non-profit, academic, and other relevant stakeholders working on capacity building in the housing sector of Puerto Rico as well as a strategy for their engagement
- Conduct a rapid assessment of both current construction practices and trainings to understand the opportunities to be leveraged and the gaps to be filled surrounding safe construction techniques for the public and tradespeople.
- Develop and coordinate a plan for Habitat to address the knowledge gaps identified, including both target audiences, potential partners and appropriate methodologies – i.e. information needed to disseminate for the public, training programs for homeowners, or trainings for tradespeople. This plan should include key delivery partners (i.e. vocational training institutions, associations, etc.) and the potential for certifications/accreditations to be issued.
- Identify partners for the design and establishing standards reflected in desired content
- Develop and pilot materials to be used to support the capacity building trainings
- Identify partner(s) for the diffusion of trainings and information
- Lead the contextualization of the Participatory Approach for Safe Shelter Awareness (PASSA) and Habitat Ready to Puerto Rico, including a training of trainers on risk mapping and risk reduction.
- Provide technical leadership and guidance to staff in the relevant program areas, and promote/facilitate program integration where possible and appropriate.
- Minimum 7 years experience in construction, engineering or architectural fields
- Minimum 5-7 years of professional experience developing and executing high-quality strategies
- Minimum 5 years project management experience, including within the Development Sector
- Proven ability developing and leading the creation of capacity building programs for reconstruction
- Familiarity with construction technology
- Strong leadership skills and strategic thinking ability
- Disaster response/risk management certification
- Ability to take initiative and work with little supervision
- Strong oral and written communication skills in Spanish and English
Preferable:
- Master’s Degree in a related field
- Two or more years of disaster response/relief experience preferred
- Experience in low-cost residential housing construction preferred
- Experience working in a non-profit organization preferred