Coordinator, Risk Communication, Community Engagement and Accountability

Job Purpose

“This is a national staff position open to nationals and others who are legally eligible to work in countries where IFRC has legal presence: Buenos Aires (Argentina), San José (Costa Rica), Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic), Guatemala City (Guatemala), Tegucigalpa (Honduras), Kingston (Jamaica), Managua (Nicaragua), Panama City (Panama), Lima (Peru), or Port of Spain (Trinidad and Tobago). Candidates must be able to provide proof of their eligibility to work in those countries during the application phase”

The position will be responsible for the creation of the RCCE inter-agency working group in the Americas for the COVID-19 response. Additionally, will be responsible for developing and coordinating a collective approach to Risk communication, Community Engagement and Accountability which promotes coordinated capacity building efforts, targeted guidance and collaborative technical support based on the harmonized standards of practice, collective advocacy and rapid sharing of knowledge, innovations, and learnings. He/She will ensures collective community engagement priorities are reflected throughout the humanitarian/preparedness and response plan and programme cycle, including leading resource mobilization. The coordinator is responsible for coordinating activities across the response, through the facilitation of a community engagement technical working group and associated work plan. He/She represents the platform in relevant coordination fora (e.g. Pillars coordination platforms, IMST, HCT and ICCG, or equivalent), reporting on the priority community engagement issues and advising on appropriate courses of action, to enable decision-making. In addition, the coordinator advocates for the integration of community engagement approaches within public health and humanitarian operations and facilitates the development of joint planning, fundraising and common advocacy.

Job Duties and Responsibilities

Coordination

Define the ToRs of the RCCE inter- agency working group and promote dialogue for the creation of the group.

Support the convening, facilitation, and coordination of the government-led Community Engagement coordination group (WG), ensuring discussions are participatory, results oriented and well-documented. This entails (but is not limited to):

• Developing and regularly updating and adapt interagency community engagement strategies and workplans (as part of the response plan) based on the evolution of the emergency and crisis and community insights
• Supporting government to bring together all relevant health and humanitarian/non-humanitarian actors working on community engagement, including traditional and non-traditional actors, to improve national/sub-national level collaboration and coordination of activities and map coordination capacities and roles and responsibilities of the main partners involved
• Identifying key RCCE challenges impacting the effectiveness of the response and discuss common approaches to address them
• Coordinating the identification of gaps for social science research including primary research, when necessary.
• Engaging with the media at regional level to encourage responsible reporting, sharing of key health and humanitarian information and tackling the spread of rumours and misinformation.
• Developing and reporting on common community engagement indicators as part of the response monitoring framework.
• Represent the community engagement WG in relevant coordination fora, reporting on the priority community engagement issues and advising on appropriate courses of action, to enable decision-making
• Create the community feedback sub-working group to collect, analyse and agree recommendations based on the trends in community feedback across agencies.
• Coordinate WG-related performance monitoring and recommend corrective action where and when needed.
• Support the development of appropriate transition/preparedness strategies, in partnership with/support of the government, including how coordination mechanisms will be sustained in the recovery/preparedness phase.

Advisory and technical support:

• Facilitate a rapid self-assessment of current clusters/pillars community engagement practices throughout the programme cycle to measure current performance against community engagement standards and commitments.
• Coordinate the implementation of a community engagement needs assessment, in order to understand community information needs, communities capacities, knowledge, practices, behaviours and perceptions.
• Provide technical advice and support to other pillars/clusters in the response on enhancing risk communication, community engagement and accountability in their approaches and assessments efforts, including supporting them to address key recommendations arising from community feedback data and social science research.
• Promote the use and adaptation of existing community engagement tools and guidance for national/sub-national implementation of coordinated community engagement approaches (including needs assessments, perceptions surveys, partners mapping, community feedback approaches etc)

Job Duties and Responsibilities (continued)

• Work with partners, to develop demand-driven guidance/tools based on assessment of gaps.
• Capture and document examples of best practices, including community-driven approaches to response efforts.
• Conduct a desk review of community engagement documentation relating to the response and manage a repository of existing RCCE materials and resources that promote practice that ensures integration/implementation of Community engagement standards and principles in the response.
• Working with the Information Management Officer and Working Group members, support the compilation of, and regularly updated of 4Ws (Who does What, Where and When) mapping, with inputs from
• Working with the Information Management Officer, catalyse support and expertise to develop a process of aggregating the analysis of community feedback provided by organisations to deliver an overview of priority concerns and issues of the community. Seek inputs from cluster/sector leads and other decision-makers to ensure the output reflects their information needs.

Capacity-Building:

• Support a rapid capacity needs assessment among community engagement partners and develop targeted capacity-building and training initiatives
• Coordinate joint capacity building exercises to address specific gaps identified.

Partnership and Representation:

• Catalyse and accelerate collaboration between a wide range of organisations engaged in policy, practice, and research to increase the scale, quality and consistency of community engagement approaches
• Actively promote civil society and local actors’ membership in the coordination structures – where possible helping broker partnerships with international actors.
• Advocate for action on community engagement priorities across the response, including community feedback and social science research, with the response leadership and to the wider humanitarian leadership structure in order to improve overall effectiveness and accountability of the response
• Ensure strong representation of community engagement needs and priorities in relevant multi-sector coordination forums
• Advocate, educate, and forge consensus among all those involved in the emergency response, on the tools and approaches for establishing effective community engagement.

Education

• Advanced university degree (master’s degree or equivalent degree) in political science, behavioural/social sciences, international studies or a related field is required.

Experience

• Experience in project management
• Demonstrable technical experience (7 year+) in risk communications, social and behaviour change communication and community engagement and accountability in epidemics and other humanitarian emergencies
• Demonstrable experience in coordinating multi-stakeholder working groups to achieve common goals in humanitarian settings, in particular in developing and implementing community engagement strategies.
• Experience in building consensus and brokering partnerships
• Experience facilitating participatory approaches is highly desirable.
• Ability to work collaboratively as part of a team in a challenging and highly fluid environment, flexibility and the ability to handle constant change.
• Proven ability to live and work in challenging physical conditions
• Experience with the UN or an international organization or NGO
• Experience of working with UN Humanitarian Coordination Teams, clusters and health emergencies coordination systems, preferred
• A good understanding of information management (including data flows, protection and analysis), as well as qualitative and quantitative data collection methods, preferred

Knowledge, Skills and Language

• Proven communication skills – verbal, written, visual of highest quality – suitable for range of internal and external audiences, including influencing senior managers and external stakeholders.
• Good coordination and negotiation skills, with the capacity to build partnerships across organisations and bring people together to collaborate on RCCE approaches and activities
• Advanced analytical and problem-solving skills, able to identify key challenges and humanitarian needs and bring partners together to address these and design a coordinated and effective response
• Sound knowledge of institutional coordination structures, mandates, policies and guidelines pertaining to humanitarian affairs and public health emergency response, and knowledge of the institutions of the UN system and key partners
• Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to work well in a team. Diplomacy, tact and negotiation skills are essential
• Excellent project management skills, able to work under pressure and manage multiple projects simultaneously, to a high standard and to deadline
• Able to capture learning and use it to make improvements in programming and operations

Languages

• Fluent spoken and written English and Spanish
• Fluent spoken and written French, preferred
• Good command of a language relevant in the region or country of assignment (i.e., French Creole, Portuguese), preferred

Competencies and Values

VALUES: Respect for diversity; Integrity; Professionalism; Accountability

CORE COMPETENCIES: Communication; Collaboration and Teamwork; Judgement and Decision Making; National Societies and Customer Relations; Creativity and Innovation; Building Trust

FUNCTIONAL COMPETENCIES: Building Alliances; Leadership; Empowering Others