Program Officers : - Wajir and Baringo Counties at Kenya Red Cross Society

JOB SUMMARY

As Program Officer, you will be responsible for the effective and efficient project management of the COVID 19 vaccination project. Under the guidance of the Programme Manager you will work closely with other departments and project teams to enable the projects to be carried out on time and to budget and within KRCS’ quality standards of delivery

The program officer will support in implementing, monitoring and evaluating the activities necessary for scaling up COVID-19 vaccination to at least 60 per cent coverage of their populations with safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines. The job will also entail one to determine the bottlenecks to effective implementation of COVID 19 vaccination project in the community. This will involve finding solutions to problems encountered in Vaccination hesitance, community engagement, stakeholder ownership, vaccine management and reporting

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Provide technical support for project activities, monitoring, reporting, evaluation, and documentation in a timely manner.
• Work with all relevant stakeholders to address training, on COVID 19 vaccination and capacity-building needs and deliver relevant interventions to the beneficiaries in the project areas.
• Advocate and liaise closely with stakeholder and partners in the county as a champion for increasing community-wide engagement prioritizing on the vulnerable population on COVID-19 vaccination and overall response.
• Coordinate & oversee the day-to-day project implementation against project milestones and activities, against scheduled work plans and overall project objectives
• Liaise with the project teams and partners to ensure the successful implementation of project activities, including creating work plans, budgeting, reconciliation of finances, and reporting
• Work closely with other team members to ensure a flexible and coherent approach to implementation; and to develop and implement tools to evaluate the outcomes of activities, and share learning internally and externally
• Ensure all the project team fully comply with all the project and organizational policies and standards by constant sensitization and guidance
• Maintain necessary communication both internally and externally to facilitate effective coordination for project delivery
• Ensure that project volunteers and staff have necessary tools and capacity for implementation of the planned activities at the field level.
• Develop a project risk plan and proactively manage change and project risks at field level to continuously improve project implementation process, in accordance with timelines and budgets.
• Ensure adequate data quality is maintained in the projects by ensuring accurate, complete and submission of reliable datasets and reports.
• Support programmatic documentation of best practices, promising practices, case studies and lessons learnt for purposes of knowledge sharing and retention.
• Prepare periodic progress and annual reports showing achievements against planned targets as well as providing justification for performance variance and areas of improvement.
• Manage the project budget for COVID 19 vaccination by ensuring utilization and monitoring in accordance with KRCS internal controls and donor regulations
• Monitor project expenditures and ensure budget is strictly adhered to, financial procedures are observed

Minimum Qualifications and Experience 

• Essential: University degree in public health or similar areas from a recognized university.
• Desirable: Advanced university degree (master's degree or higher) in public health from a recognized university.
• Minimum of seven years' experience in planning, managing and implementing public health programmes, including experience in Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) and new COVID-19 vaccine.
• Working experience at field level with recognized Organization with expertise in health and emergencies response.
• Experience in implementation of projects in multi-stakeholders’ environment.
• Sound knowledge and skills in database collection and management.
• Proven ability to multi-task across various planning and implementation processes.

Key competences

• Ability to establish harmonious working relationships as part of a team, adapt to diverse educational and cultural backgrounds, and maintain a high standard of personal conduct
• Has good understanding of the principles of results-based management and has the ability to develop plans, organize resources and take actions to ensure objectives are achieved within realistic timelines
• Demonstrated technical expertise in strategic management, project planning and budgeting, resource management, implementation ability as well as programme monitoring and evaluation 
• Ability to provide technical and practical guidance and support to a team across geographically disbursed locations
• Strong partnership brokering skills with a proven ability to build and manage high-level strategic relationships
• Excellent problem solving skill-sets, able to navigate ambiguous and complex structures - gained through experience in managing complex cross-organizational projects with multiple stakeholders
• Possess strong analytical skills.
• Knowledge of institutional donors and experience of developing proposals
• Ability to write clear and well-argued assessment and project reports. A high level of written and spoken English
• Excellent communication and influencing skills
• Excellent interpersonal skills necessary for interactions with all stakeholders.
• Sound IT knowledge including and not limited to Ms Word, Ms Excel, PowerPoint