Job Openings at Practical Action East Africa

Contract duration

No of Positions: 8

8 months (November 2020- June 2021)

Job overview/summary

The main objective of this position is to support the implementation of hygiene promotion activities within EWASSA project. This includes training of Community Health Volunteers, establishing and training WASH Committees and directly carrying out hygiene awareness with the target populations.
The WASH- Hygiene Promoter Mentors will be based in Turkana Central, Turkana East, Turkana South and Loima sub-counties. They will report to the Project Officer- Community Mobilisation or any other staff as designated by the Area Coordinator. S/he will be primarily responsible for leading the implementation of hygiene promotion activities at community level in line with their scope of work as directed by the supervisor.

Core responsibilities

The main responsibilities of the WASH – Hygiene Promoter Mentors will include but not limited to the following:

• Ensure that the EWASSA led Water and Sanitation activities are implemented in a timely and professional manner while considering beneficiary needs.
• Directly implement hygiene promotion activities in communities; this includes household visits and hygiene awareness sessions.
• Coordinate closely with water operators over water quality and beneficiary needs and preferences regarding water collection points.
• Additionally, liaise closely with CHEWs/CHAs and public health technicians to ensure hygiene promotion data is captured appropriately
• Distribute Information, Communication and Education (IEC) materials to Community Health Volunteers and train them on the appropriate use.
• Maintain open and professional relationship with team members, promoting a strong team spirit and providing oversight and guidance to enable work teams to successfully complete their tasks on time and within budget line.
• Organize sessions in the communities to identify the deficiencies in terms of hygiene, sanitation and the use of water.
• Organize/facilitate group awareness sessions on hygiene practices r in the community and other identified locations
• Participate in preparing training modules for the promotion of hygiene with the supervisor and provide training sessions to community volunteers and/or to targeted populations.
• Participate in evaluation/assessment missions and liaise with the authorities, committees and other beneficiaries.
• Ensure that hygiene promotion activities meet agreed objectivities within the timeframe.
• Apply the methodologies defined for the sensitizing sessions on hygiene promotion and participate in elaborating a schedule of awareness raising activities.
• Ensure the program activities foster accountability to beneficiaries
• Ensure gender, social inclusion and protection are entrenched in program delivery
• Write a summary of the weekly reports of progress on hygiene promotion activities and propose possible improvements.

Sub counties of operations:

• Turkana Central (2posts)
• Turkana South (2 posts)
• Turkana East (2 posts)
• Loima (2 posts)

Qualifications, experience and competencies

• Minimum Diploma or Certificate in Public Health, Water, Environmental Health or other related courses.
• At least 1-year experience in health, WASH or community development
• Experience in implementation of hygiene promotion activities.
• Experience in establishment and training of hygiene Promoters, WASH Committees.
• Competent communication skills, effective in representation and liaison.
• Works well in and promotes teamwork, comfortable in a multi-cultural environment, flexible and able to handle pressure.
• Ability to build and sustain relationships with community members so as to create a sense of trust and respect.
• Competent user of MS Application: Word and Excel.
• Good knowledge of the intervention area.
• Knowledge of the local dialect (Turkana) and Swahili is a MUST.
• Proven experience in gender, social inclusion, equality and empowerment principles

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About the role

The Impact and Learning team was created over the past year and aims to support Practical Action to both increase its impact as well as to gather evidence and learning about that impact. In particular the team will be supporting and building capacity of the field offices and projects to use the latest good practice to design new programmes, have clear process and impact monitoring, and have evaluations and reviews which help projects and countries listen, learn and adapt. Gender equity is key to see impact benefitting women as well as communities as a whole. Therefore, the role involves helping all Practical Action teams to understand gender transformation and apply our Gender Policy. It also involves ensuring that gender is strongly integrated into all aspects of programming.

The Impact and Gender Advisor will play two roles. As an Impact Advisor they will be responsible for engaging and building capacity of selected Regional and Country Offices, providing support through all aspects of the programming cycle. Although all the Impact Advisors in the team will include gender in their work, the second aspect of the role as global Gender Advisor, will involve taking the lead to run the Global Gender Group, run trainings on gender and promote cross-country learnings of how to embed gender transformation.

The Advisor will be part of the Impact and Learning team and report to the Head of that team. Critical to the success of the role will be the ability to be engage with a wide variety of staff across Practical Action at all levels as well as to provide practical capacity building to help staff apply good practice and learnings. Travel to Practical Action country programmes will be required in this role.

The role offers an amazing opportunity for someone interested in impact and programme quality as well as gender and someone who likes to work as part of a small team but with wide-reaching connections and impact.

About you

You are confident, well organised, enthusiastic and like working as part of a team.

You enjoy building relationships and communicating with a wide range of people, whether that is in writing or verbally. You are confident working with a range of different people, including staff and partners from different Practical Action country offices.

You will have strong experience and understanding of programme quality as well as gender and be skilled in building capacity in adaptive and creative ways. At times, you may also be required to represent Practical Action externally.

Why join us?

The opportunity to work for an organisation that is making a positive difference to the lives of people worldwide, a friendly and supportive culture, working with values driven and highly engaged colleagues, work life balance and flexible working – these are just some of the reasons we think Practical Action is a great place to work.

This is a global role, and therefore for this role has the possibility of being based in any of the countries where Practical Action operates and has an employing entity. This role is however being advertised in the UK, Nepal and Kenya.

The potholder will be required to have the relevant Right to Work for the country which they are applying and the terms of conditions of employment will be in accordance with that country.

Remote working / home working is possible with this role.

Additional information

Please note that should we recruit a suitable candidate before the closing date, we will close applications earlier than the specified date.

We treat all applications for employment on their merits and do not take into consideration any factors that are not relevant to the job such as disability, race, age, religion, gender, gender reassignment or sexual orientation.

Practical Action is committed to safeguarding and protecting children and vulnerable adults and as such candidates will be subject to pre-employment checks including criminal checks and terrorist financing.

Closing date for applications: 17th November 2020

Interview dates: 23rd – 27th November 2020

Please note that, should we recruit a suitable candidate before the closing date, we will close applications earlier than the specified date.