Closing date: Monday, 9 March 2015
Communication for Development Specialist, P-4, Nairobi, Kenya (Temp Appointment)
Vacancy No: E-VN-2015-000476
Duty Station: Nairobi
Country: Kenya
Region: ESARO
Job Level:P-4
Position: TAC4DESAR
Application Close: 09-Mar-15
Contract Type: Temp/Short-term Staff
Purpose of the Position
Within the framework of the UNICEF Strategic Plan 2014-2017 and in line with the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) Managing for Results initiative, the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Management Team has identified five programmatic priorities to focus cross-country action and learning, and to reinforce joint accountability:
- Enabling children to survive and thrive.
- Reducing stunting to provide opportunities for children to realize their full potential.
- Improving education quality and learning outcomes to prepare children for the future.
- Achieving results for adolescents (R4A) that help them manage risks and realize their full potential.
- Scaling up social protection interventions to reduce child poverty and other vulnerabilities that impede the full realization of child rights.
Demand creation, community participation, positive adoption of behaviours for service uptake and addressing social norms are key elements for the success of every programme. Therefore, Communication for Development (C4D) has been recognized as one of the key strategies for achieving results for programmatic areas.
UNICEF is the lead technical agency in all countries to provide technical support for all areas of C4D work related to children and adolescents. However, it has been identified that two of the Regional Priorities – Improving education quality and learning outcomes to prepare children for the future and Achieving results for adolescents (R4A) that help them manage risks and realize their full potential – requires particular attention in the area of C4D. In order to address this, there is a need for additional human resource capacity to support the countries in the region to effectively manage the C4D portfolio in their respective countries.
The purpose of this temporary position is to provide technical assistance to country offices and to strengthen the capacity in the C4D section in the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office so that countries can receive adequate support to manage the C4D programmes, particularly in the area of education and child protection.
Major duties and responsibilities
Under the supervision and guidance of the Senior C4D Adviser, and in close collaboration with the Child Protection and Education teams, the incumbent will provide technical assistance to country offices in C4D generally, but with particular focus on education and child protection, and enhance support of the development of an evidence-based and theory driven C4D agenda for Child Protection and Education. The incumbent will therefore support countries to develop evidence based C4D strategies, provide capacity building of UNICEF staff and partners on C4D and monitor the implementation and outcome of C4D interventions. These activities have been reflected in the Regional Office work-plan of the C4D section.
Key Expected Results
1. Regional review and analysis of global evidence based strategies on C4D and Child Protection and Education undertaken and findings disseminated.
- Undertake an analysis of the global evidence on C4D and Child Protection and disseminate the findings.
- Provide support to research and studies in selected countries to understand practices, social norms, knowledge, attitude and perceptions towards education and child protection.
- Facilitate documentation of key lessons learnt and C4D good practices on or relevant to Education and Child Protection and support the dissemination these findings in the region and at global level.
- Support the development of a C4D and Child Protection theory of change model for prevention and response to VAC and Child Marriage.
- Review and enhance C4D plans for Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) and support activities’ implementation and, closely with the Child Protection team, identify and disseminate best practices on C4D and birth registration programmes in ESAR.
- Engage on the C4D and Education global project to review evidence and disseminate findings on C4D and Education and prepare programme briefs on how to apply successful evidence-based C4D strategies to increase demand for school enrolment; inclusive education and quality education services.
2. Oversight of implementation of C4D interventions on education and child protection
- Monitor regularly the implementation of key C4D interventions in countries and provide feedback to countries and the regional office teams.
- Ensure the quality, consistency and appropriateness of communication materials that are developed, produced, and disseminated to local communities, government officials, other partners and the press.
- Provide recommendations on operational strategies in the areas of participatory communication, social mobilization and behaviour change and on appropriate materials and media to reach target audiences.
- Provide technical support on the review/development of C4D strategies for girls’ education and support an operational research to learn and document the work on demand creation for girl’s education in at least 1 country.
- Support countries to develop terms of reference, research tools and protocols for establishing evidence for C4D through KAP, formative research and other studies.
- Provide guidance to countries to develop C4D strategies and frameworks for education and child protection in priority countries.
3. Capacity building support
- Review existing global C4D manuals and training guidelines on education and child protection and adapt it for ESAR.
- Develop training materials and activities to build capacity in participatory and behaviour change communication for personnel who are involved in the planning, implementation and evaluation of programme communication intervention, in support of programme sustainability.
- Facilitate and/or conduct training on broad C4D issues, but with a particular focus on Education and Child Protection
- Orient Education officers on evidence-based and effective C4D strategies for the Education sector.
4. Monitoring and evaluation
- Monitor and provide support for evaluation of programme activities on the basis of applied communication research and frequent visits to country offices project sites.
- Analyze and evaluate data to ensure compliance and achievement of objectives and recommend corrective action, when necessary, to meet programme/project objectives.
- Prepare monitoring and evaluation reports in accordance with the established guidelines, methods and procedures.
- Disseminate communication research findings, ensures exchanges and sharing of experience, lessons learned, best practices, and new methods to government officials, programme staff, and other UNICEF partners.
Qualifications of Successful Candidate
- Advanced university degree in behavioural and/or social sciences (anthropology, sociology, psychology, social development, etc.)/ Communication for development
- Understanding of – or training in – current developments in the field of communication for development theory and research, participatory processes, media; as also strategic communication planning, behaviour analysis, formative research and evaluation
- Minimum 8 years of solid work experience in C4D, 4-6 years in developing country contexts.
- Experience in inter-disciplinary approaches in strategic communication and application of C4D strategies, tools and resources to address behavior and social change dimensions especially in crises.
- Proven experience in application of C4D strategies, tools and resources to address behavior and social change dimensions of emergencies.
- Experience of working on Education and Child Protection sector would be an asset
- Fluency in English and another UN language.
- Knowledge of the local working language of the duty station would be an asset.
Competencies of Successful Candidate
- Communicates effectively to varied audiences, including during formal public speaking.
- Able to work effectively in a multi-cultural environment.
- Sets high standards for quality of work and consistently achieves project goals.
- Has good leadership and supervisory skills; co-ordinates group activities, ensuring that roles within the team are clear.
- Translates strategic direction into plans and objectives.
- Analyzes and integrates diverse and complex quantitative and qualitative data from a wide range of sources.
- Quickly builds rapport with individuals and groups; maintains an effective network of individuals across organizational departments.
- Identifies urgent and potentially difficult decisions and acts on them promptly; initiates and generates team- and department-wide activities.
- Demonstrates, applies and shares expert technical knowledge across the organization.
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