County Support Officers at ACDI/VOCA

Location: Kitui, Makueni and Taita Taveta

OVERVIEW OF RESILIENCE LEARNING ACTIVITY

The Resilience Learning Activity (RLA) is a five-year, USAID-funded initiative (2019-2024) that supports regional, national, and local organizations and institutions in Northern Kenya, South Eastern Kenya, Somalia, and the Horn of Africa to undertake analysis while strengthening their capacities for analytics; facilitating learning for adaptive management; and improving knowledge management and communication to align with USAID’s Journey to Self-Reliance and the Horn of Africa Resilience Framework.

In Kenya, RLA provides backbone support to the South Eastern Kenya (SEK) Coordination Mechanism, in the South Eastern region of the country.

The mechanism brings together USAID implementing partners in the three counties of Kitui, Makueni and Taita Taveta and local partners to coordinate resilience and economic growth activities and streamline USAID’s investments.

To achieve this, SEK takes on the role of lead learning partner to guide and facilitate SEK partners, ensuring evidence-based learning, analytics, and adaptive management to partners and county governments alike.

JOB SUMMARY

RLA seeks to recruit a County Support Officer to provide technical and logistical support for activities in the three SEK counties and the respective SEK County Leads/Deputy County Leads in coordinating USAID investments at the county level. The County Support Officer will be based at the counties in the Office of the SEK County Lead designate.

The overall objective of this assignment is to provide technical and logistical support at county level for RLA activities in the three SEK counties and to SEK County Teams for a period of one year with the possibility of extension. The position will be based in the counties and reporting to the DCOP.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Project operations, communications, and logistics

• Support RLA and SEK County Leads in implementation of activities at the county level, including but not limited to administrative, coordination, and logistical support for workshops, meetings, webinars, capacity building initiatives, learning activities, and other events.
• Support RLA activities in collaboration with communications team and the SEK County Teams that are focused on improving knowledge management and strategic communications, including information sharing, knowledge capture, and reporting on county activities, updates, successes, collaboration, and learning.
• Work with SEK County Teams to capture relevant information and updates on shocks and stresses in the counties that contribute to learning and support evidence-based decision making at the county and national level.
• Engage in regular travel between counties based on activity needs.

Monitoring and Reporting

• Collaborate with County Teams to support RLA activities that strengthen M&E and data analytics, including data collection, monitoring activities of local organizations and institutions receiving RLA funding, and 3rd party monitoring for learning.
• Support RLA to monitor the implementation of a capacity building strategy for local organizations and institutions to develop and maintain an excellent internal CLA system, including regular reflection and analysis of program monitoring data.
• Support RLA with systematizing feedback loop processes for SEK County activities, including pause and reflect sessions, after action reviews, strategic reviews, phone and online surveys, interviews, and other methods.

Collaboration and partnerships coordination

• Engage with county SEK Partners, county government officials, local organizations and communities and provide support as needed.
• Support SEK activities in collaboration with SEK County Teams focused on strengthening learning and adaptive management of the partnership and local organizations and institutions.
• Perform other work-related duties as assigned by the SEK Coordination Mechanism.

Qualifications and Competencies

• A Minimum of bachelor’s degree, or its equivalent in Development, Research methods, Economics, Social Sciences, Project Management or Degree in a related field is highly preferred.
• Minimum of two years of experience in event management, supporting learning and adaptive management activities, experience in emergency and development programming is relevant.
• Knowledge of program resilience framework and approaches in the fragile context is an asset.
• Good interpersonal and networking skills
• Excellent report writing and strong computer skills especially with MS Word and Excel and other related packages.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English and Kiswahili.
• Ability to travel and work within the ASAL counties.
• Previous work experience with SEK partners desired.