Social and Behavior Change (SBC) Lead, USAID/DRC Resilience Food Security Activity (RFSA)

Summary:

Save the Children is seeking a Social and Behavior Change (SBC) Lead for an anticipated five-year USAID-funded Resilience Food Security Activity (RFSA) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The program will seek to sustainably improve food and nutrition security and resilience among poor and chronically vulnerable households and communities in the selected regions. Hiring is contingent upon successful award of the project and USAID approval of the candidate.

The SBC Lead will oversee SBC activity design, planning, and implementation. They will be responsible for supporting SBC interventions across the activity by playing a lead role in guiding formative research, developing an integrated SBC strategy and implementation plan, supporting the development of tools, and monitoring the progress of activities to ensure a consistent and coherent execution of interventions.

What You’ll Be Doing (Essential Duties):

• Develop and implement SBC–related qualitative and quantitative formative research together with the MEAL team to inform SBC strategy development.
• Lead SBC strategy development and provide technical guidance and coordination for participatory design and implementation, particularly at household and community levels (includes interpersonal communication, mass and social media- community mobilization and advocacy; capacity strengthening; monitoring and learning) in close collaboration with SBC colleagues from SCUS.
• Provide technical guidance for the development, adaptation, field testing, and effective use of state-of-the-art SBC approaches, materials, tools and job aids in support of improved outcomes in nutrition, health, livelihoods and resilience.
• Train and mentor staff on the implementation of strategy, approaches, tools, and job aids.
• Support the development of effective SBC M&E indicators and evaluation designs.
• Lead material and activity field testing design and implementation in collaboration with SCUS SBC colleagues.
• Support capacity strengthening and strategies to improve community-led advocacy and community mobilization in support of addressing the nutrition, health, livelihoods and resilience needs of the poorest and most underserved.
• Foster and maintain effective, professional relationships with a broad range of community, public, and private sector counterparts.
• Identify and supervise technical deliverables of SBC consultants, design agencies and mass media production houses.
• Ensure timely and quality completion of all relevant program deliverables and reporting.
• Document SBC and community mobilization approaches, successes and challenges to support programmatic and sector-wide learning.
• Generate timely information regarding SBC strategy effectiveness, feeding this information into collaborating, learning and adapting (CLA) processes and leading necessary adjustments.

Required Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in a social science discipline, communications, social marketing, anthropology, etc,
• Minimum of 7 years of progressively increasing technical responsibility leading to a senior level of expertise in SBC is required, with demonstrable time and experience working on maternal and child health or nutrition, agricultural, environmental and/or advocacy programming, including but not limited to strategic engagement, development communications or campaigns, or commercial marketing/advertising and community engagement/community capacity strengthening.
• Demonstrated experience in the development of integrated social and behavior change communication strategies.
• Experience managing creative, strategic communication design and media/materials development (mobile phones, print and/or television). This includes meaningfully engaging stakeholders and community collaborators in the design, pre-testing, production and refinement of communications materials.
• Experience working at the community level in programs that require active engagement and co-creation with families and the community in similar contexts.
• Strong knowledge of local cultural practices, social networks, gender and age dynamics in DRC.
• Experience with designing and implementing qualitative anthropological/ sociological research a plus.
• Strong capacity to write including but not limited to strategies, reports, documentation, and success stories.
• Demonstrated excellence in participatory facilitation and training.
• Good written and verbal command of English and French.

Preferred qualifications:

• Good knowledge of different provincial contexts of the DRC
• Familiarity with USG-funded Resilience and Food Security Activities and/or the Government of DRC.
• Previous experience working with USAID or other donor-funded initiatives is highly desired.
• Fluency one or more languages spoken in DRC such as Swahili, Tshiluba or Lingala.

About Save the Children:

Save the Children believes every child deserves a future. In the United States and around the world, we give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. We do whatever it takes for children – every day and in times of crisis – transforming their lives and the future we share.

Our work for children and their families requires that we commit—at every opportunity—to work together to identify and dismantle persistent systemic and structural racism, inequality, and any other forms of discrimination in this country and beyond. As an anti-racist organization, Save the Children will not tolerate discrimination in any form—in our employment practices, amongst our staff, in our leadership or toward the people we serve. We stand in solidarity with all people to fight for equal rights, justice, inclusion, and belonging.

We provide equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, ancestry, sexual orientation, national origin, age, handicap, disability, marital status, or status as a veteran. Save the Children complies with all applicable laws.

Save the Children is committed to conducting its programs and operations in a manner that is safe for the children it serves and helping protect the children with whom we are in contact. All Save the Children representatives are explicitly prohibited from engaging in any activity that may result in any kind of child abuse. In addition, it is Save the Children’s policy to create and proactively maintain an environment that aims to prevent and deter any actions and omissions, whether deliberate or inadvertent, that place children at the risk of any kind of child abuse. All our representatives are expected to conduct themselves in a manner consistent with this commitment and obligation.

Save the Children is committed to minimizing safety and security risks for our valued employees, ensuring all are given training, support and information to reduce their risk exposure while maximizing the impact of our programs for children and families. Our shared duty, both agency and individual, is to seek and maintain safe working conditions for all.