Community Engagement and Risk Communication (RCCE) Specialist

Within the delegated authority and under the supervision of the Incident Manager, and under the overall guidance of the Head, of WHO Country Office (WCO), and working closely with counterparts at the respective WHO Regional Office and WHO HQ, and partners the UN Volunteer will:

• Provide technical and operational support to overall health Education/Health Promotion activities in strengthening and mainstreaming community engagement and social mobilization strategies from the service delivery side; aligning with technical and operational priorities and objectives; and delivering through existing national and local structures;

• Ensure community engagement and social mobilization strategies and implementation plans are evidence-based, coordinated, and well executed, drawing upon anthropology and related behavioural and social sciences so that community concerns, sociocultural beliefs and practices impacting public health interventions are addressed;

• Work closely with technical teams to assess the integration and effectiveness of community engagement practices within technical SOPs according to the context e.g. access and utilisation of health services, vaccination and health promotion etc. Identify strengths, weaknesses and gaps; design interventions to address weakness and gaps e.g. training/capacity building, supervision, tools, etc;

• Collaborate with the health authorities to ensure appropriate monitoring and evaluation tools and mechanisms for community engagement and social mobilization are in place at the national and subnational level and ensure the findings are integrated into technical and operational decision-making;

• Contribute to building the national capacity through needs identification, development, operationalization and implementation of a capacity building and training plan;

• Provide regular feedback to the incident management team, national authorities and partners on the adaptation of response strategies for effective and feasible community engagement in affected areas;

• Where necessary, conduct formative research, and/or liaise with stakeholders/partners conducting sociocultural research;

• Perform any other incident-specific related duties, as required by the functional supervisor.

Results/expected outputs:

As an active WHO team member, efficient, timely, responsive, client-friendly and high-quality support rendered to WHO and its beneficiaries in the accomplishment of her/his functions, including:

• The mission of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme (WHE) is to help countries, and to coordinate international action, to prevent, prepare for, detect, rapidly respond to, and recover from outbreaks and emergencies

• The development of capacity through coaching, mentoring and formal on-the-job training, when working with (including supervising) national staff or (non-) governmental counterparts, including Implementing Partners (IPs);

• Age, Gender and Diversity (AGD) perspective is systematically applied, integrated and documented in all activities throughout the assignment;

• A final statement of achievements towards volunteerism for peace and development during the assignment, such as reporting on the number of volunteers mobilized, activities participated in and capacities developed.