External Outreach :Social & Behavior Change Emergency Specialist (Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP) ) -P3-P4/NOC-NOD, Rapid Response Rosters, Eastern and Southern Africa Region at United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF): (Deadline 4 March 2023)
Seeking external candidates only
Contract Type: Temporary Appointment (TA) or Consultancy
Duration: 3 months to 364 days
Location: Countries based in Eastern and Southern Africa
UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.
Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.
And we never give up.
For every child, hope
Since two years, countries in the ESA region have experienced an alarming increase in the number of new, or re-emerging humanitarian emergencies, including public health (including Ebola, Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever, yellow fever, wild poliovirus, and Cholera), armed conflicts and natural disasters emergencies.
UNICEF ESAR has prioritized the critical need to support countries to rapidly scale up capacity to prevent, mitigate, and manage ongoing and anticipated emergencies as well as to enhance capacity for preparedness and response to these emergencies.
Purpose
The purpose of this external announcement is to attract suitable Social & Behavior Change Emergency Specialist (Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP)) candidates interested in working in any of the countries within UNICEF’s East and Southern Africa region to respond to emergencies for the next 36 months.
The countries within each region are listed on the following website: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/index.html.
How can you make a difference?
- Provide technical support for inclusion of AAP practices in UNICEF and partner programmes.
- Conduct/review a rapid assessment of UNICEF and partner AAP/CCE practices throughout the programme cycle to measure current performance against global commitments (for both programmes and operations). Depending on the operational modality and context, the performance of implementing partners could also be assessed. This process could use the IASC Commitments on Accountability to affected Populations, the Core Humanitarian Standard, or agencies’ own internal frameworks as benchmarks.
- Assess the impact of the UNICEF and partner accountability practices, from the community’s perspective, through in-person qualitative research methodologies where possible, depending on access to the communities; otherwise through other, non- face-to-face methods. Particular attention should be paid to vulnerable, or traditionally marginalized groups.
- Document context-specific good AAP practices within UNICEF and partner programmes, to enable replication by other programmes.
- In the absence of relevant secondary data, conduct a SBC/community engagement needs assessment to understand community information needs, communications preferences, community dynamics, social norms, cultural beliefs, superstitions and other anthropological factors that could impact programmes.
- Develop a context-specific agency action plan to improve AAP performance, based on operational modalities, community preferences and global best practice that has clear deliverables, indicators and timeframes to enable a timely marked improvement in AAP performance, with a focus on closing the loop and providing feedback to the community about how their views and inputs were used.
- Identify additional resources (human, financial, technical, etc.) needed to implement the AAP plan and explore options to mobilize these.
- Monitor the implementation of the action plan, including assessing impact from communities’ perspective, to enable course corrections as needed.
- Regularly provide analysis of feedback collected by different programmes to identify trends in community perspectives and priority issues. Advocate with programmes to act on the feedback and make programme changes and course correction as needed.
- Provide on-call technical advice for agency staff and partners on AAP-related issues.
- Coordination
- Convene/lead an internal cross-sector group to share AAP/RCCE experiences, develop common tools, and agree internal referral pathways for community feedback and resolution protocols.
- Develop/update a 4Ws (who does what, where and when) matrix on AAP/CCE activities with input from each of the clusters/sectors. Focus on activities which have an impact beyond a specific project/programme and are of concern to other organisations and need to be coordinated.
- Participate in/(co)lead interagency AAP/RCCE coordination mechanisms and actively share planned information campaigns, findings from AAP/RCCE assessments, analysis of community feedback, or monitoring of community engagement strategies to enable shared learning. Actively promote national actors’ membership in the WG – where possible helping broker partnerships with international actors.
- Support the internal AAP/RCCE group’s information management functions by enabling a common system to share, aggregate and analyze community feedback to identify trends and priority issues.
- Identify capacity gaps for AAP, especially on the collection and analysis of community feedback and plan for support.
- Ensure processes are in place for referring community feedback to relevant sector leads or managers, so that such feedback can be resolved – including reporting back to communities, or ‘closing the feedback loop’.
- Representation
- Serve as a primary focal point within UNICEF on AAP/RCCE related issues and be able to provide a summary of current practice within the agency and community feedback about programmes.
- Ensure high profile for community feedback, concerns and priorities during internal meetings and planning processes.
- Represent UNICEF at inter-agency coordination meetings on AAP/RCCE.
- Provide advice and support to UNICEF partners on AAP/RCCE issues and approaches.
- Capacity building
- Assess the priority skills gaps and learning needs relating to AAP/RCCE within UNICEF and partners. This should include frontline workers and volunteers and ‘support’ staff such as HR, administration, security, etc., who all have a role to play in improving the accountability of the agency.
- Design and implement a capacity building strategy to build the knowledge of, and commitment to AAP/RCCE approaches within agency staff and partners.
- Develop context-specific capacity building materials by contextualizing global and/or national tools.
- Identify opportunities to integrate AAP/RCCE elements into existing training and tailor content to target the specific audiences.
- Collaboration with PSEA activities
Coordinate closely and collaborate with the agency PSEA focal point to:
- Develop a harmonized approach to the participatory development and promotion of a complaint response mechanism, including for sensitive issues, which builds on assessed community preferences.
- Design a context-appropriate community engagement strategy for the agency that informs the community of the code of conduct for aid workers, their right to provide feedback, the support provided to survivors of SEA and the risks of SEA.
- Collaborate on an awareness raising/sensitization campaign for staff and partners on the issues relating to AAP/CCE and PSEA.
- Ensure that there is regular feedback to the community about how complaints are handled and what the outcomes were, to help build trust in the system.
Key Expected Results
The selected candidates may be deployed to countries/regions experiencing public health emergencies (PHE) or disasters to proactively assist with Social and Behavior Change (SBC)/RCCE emergency response across UNICEF programmatic areas with a focus on promoting Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP).
This includes mobilizing partner agencies, families and communities in mitigating the negative impacts of PHE or disasters through support for the provision of lifesaving information in preferred communication channels; establishing and strengthening community feedback mechanisms; collecting and utilizing social and behavioral data; and ensuring that communities are aware of reporting mechanisms. All of these will contribute to protecting and promoting the well-being and supporting resilience of children, women and their families before, during and after emergencies.
To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…
Education-
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An advanced university degree (Master or higher) in one of the following fields is required: social and behavioral science, sociology, anthropology, education, or another relevant technical field.
*A first University Degree in a relevant field combined with 2 additional years of professional experience may be accepted in lieu of an Advanced University Degree.
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Work Experience-
- A minimum five (5) to Eight (8) years of professional experience in one or more of the following areas is required: public health, social sciences; development; strategic communications; or another related area preferably with a focus on emergency.
- Strong technical knowledge and previous experience in development and implementation of social and behaviour change, community engagement, RCCE or AAP approaches.
- Demonstrated technical skills in collection, review and utilization of community feedback and social and behavioral data and communication of key findings and recommendations to a range of audiences.
- Relevant experience in a UN system agency or organization is considered as an asset.
- Experience in advising, persuading on new approaches, and strong advocacy skills is an asset.
- Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergency is considered an asset.
- A basic understanding of UNICEF’s core commitments to children in humanitarian action, humanitarian principles, standards, coordination mechanisms, gender and diversity aspects of humanitarian work.
Language Requirement:-
- Fluency in verbal and written English and/or French (depending on the country office’s official language). Knowledge of another UN language or a local language is an asset
For every Child, you demonstrate…
UNICEF’s Core Values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust and Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS) underpin everything we do and how we do it. Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: https://uni.cf/UNICEFValues
UNICEF competencies required for this post are…
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- Nurtures, Leads and Manages People (2) (For P4/NOD level only)
- Demonstrates Self Awareness and Ethical Awareness (2)
- Works Collaboratively with others (2)
- Builds and Maintains Partnerships (2)
- Innovates and Embraces Change (2)
- Thinks and Acts Strategically (2)
- Drive to achieve impactful results (2)
- Manages ambiguity and complexity (2)
During the recruitment process, we test candidates following the competency framework. Familiarize yourself with our competency framework and its different levels: competency framework here.
UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children.
The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.
UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children.
All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.
Remarks:
Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.
UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance. Issuance of a visa by the host country of the duty station, which will be facilitated by UNICEF, is required for IP positions. Appointments are also subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid). Government employees that are considered for employment with UNICEF are normally required to resign from their government before taking up an assignment with UNICEF. UNICEF reserves the right to withdraw an offer of appointment, without compensation, if a visa or medical clearance is not obtained, or necessary inoculation requirements are not met, within a reasonable period for any reason.
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