Program Officer, Early Childhood Development (Kisumu) at PATH

Job Description

PATH has recently received a 2 -year award from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation to further work with local partners in the Smart Start Siaya consortium to consolidate executive leadership and strengthen the enabling environment for NCfECD in Siaya county and to scale up Nurturing Care for ECD (NCfECD) into additional geographies within the Lake Region Economic Block (LREB). In this new award, PATH will work closely with KMET, Siaya county and LREB in efforts to establish the foundations for strong NCfECD governance, coordination, and investment in the region

PATH is seeking to hire a Program Officer to support scale up of Nurturing care for ECD into additional geographies within LREB. This position is based in Kisumu.

Specific responsibilities include the following:

• Working closely with KMET, coordinate and conduct capacity building sessions through sensitization, training, and mentorship of key government officers within LREB- focusing on policy makers and technical teams.
• Working closely with KMET and LREB secretariat, coordinate advocacy forums for improved government leadership, coordination, and investment in ECD.
• Working closely with LREB secretariat, map out existing child health and development policies and support dissemination and domestication of ECD related polices and guidelines.
• Coordinate sensitization of key government officials including members of county executive committees on the Science of ECD.
• Engage key government officers in NCfECD planning, strategizing on how to integrate missing NCfECD components into their existing workstreams, and identifying funding sources.
• Working closely with KMET, support integration of NCfECD into adolescent and Young Women programs in select LREB counties.
• Support the establishment of Multi sectorial teams (MST) for coordination of NCfECD activities in specific LREB counties.
• Provide technical assistance to 6 LREB counties to develop roadmaps for NCfECD implementation.
• Support dissemination of all relevant policy documents including Integrated ECD Policy, National NCfECD Strategy among others and facilitate discussion on domestication in LREB counties.
• Document project activities by ensuring timely data collection, transmission, and management and by keeping updated project reports.
• Support routine acquisition of county and sub-county level data from various sources for analysis, recording, and dissemination.
• Support any dedicated research activities—e.g., protocol development, data review and analysis.
• Contribute to the development and implementation of a strategy for synthesizing and disseminating key results, programmatic lessons learned, methodologies developed and other research outputs of the program.
• Provide other technical inputs to the project as needed.

Required Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant discipline—project management, health, nutrition, social studies, ECD, etc.—or an equivalent of education and work experience.
• At least three years of experience working within government health system preferable supporting integration of ECD into maternal neonatal and child health services
• Experience working on issues related to maternal and child health, nutrition, and/or children’s development is preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to work within government structures and coordinate different stakeholders
• Demonstrated ability to work within the health system—with health managers at County, Sub County levels, health facilities and communities
• Sound technical knowledge of issues related to maternal and child health and nutrition and ECD
• Strong capacity building abilities; excellent facilitation, mentorship, and coordination skills
• Field oriented and comfortable with team approach to programming
• Excellent oral, written, and presentation skills