Kenya: Community Engagement and Accountability Delegate – Food Crisis Operations

Global overview

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC or “the Federation”) is the World’s largest volunteer-based humanitarian network. The Federation is a membership organization established by and comprised of its member National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Along with National Societies and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Federation is part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The overall aim of the IFRC is” to inspire, encourage, facilitate, and promote at all times all forms of humanitarian activities by National Societies with a view to preventing and alleviating human suffering and thereby contributing to the maintenance and promotion of human dignity and peace in the world.” It works to meet the needs and improve the lives of vulnerable people before, during and after disasters, health emergencies and other crises.

The Federation is served by a Secretariat based in Geneva, with regional and country offices throughout the world. The Secretariat is led by the IFRC Secretary General and provides the central capacity of the International Federation to serve, connect, and represent National Societies. The Secretariat’s focus includes providing support to the IFRC governance mechanisms; setting norms and standards; providing guidance; ensuring consistency; coordination and accountability for performance; knowledge sharing; promoting collaboration within and respect for the RCRC Movement; and expanding engagement with partners. The Secretariat’s headquarters is organized in three main business groups: (i) Partnerships, including Movement and Membership; (ii) Programs and Operations; and (iii) Management. The Secretariat has five regional office, as follows: Americas (Panama City); Africa (Nairobi); Asia/Pacific (Kuala Lumpur); Europe (Budapest); Middle East and North Africa (Beirut).

Food security crisis in Africa

Since the end of 2016, the African continent is facing an unprecedented food crisis, with peaks predicted throughout 2017. According to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS-NET), 81 million people across 45 countries could require food assistance in 2017. The causes and factors of this crisis are multi-layered and include drought caused by low rainfall, chronic poverty, and conflict and violence, which has led to population movement and reduced access to livelihoods and humanitarian assistance. Adding to this, severe outbreaks of cholera, acute watery diarrhea, and other communicable diseases are ongoing in Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Nigeria, contributing to the elevated levels of acute malnutrition and mortality. The Red Cross Movement is responding in the immediate to these complex crises while working on longer-term response. The current countries of focus include Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Nigeria. However as the food crisis spreads, increasing attention is being given to Burundi and the Sahel region, primarily Senegal, Niger, Mauritania, Mali, Chad and Burkina Faso.

Community engagement and accountability

Community engagement and accountability (CEA) is an approach to Red Cross and Red Crescent programming and operations. It is supported by a set of activities that help put communities at the centre of what we do, by integrating communication and participation throughout the programme cycle or operation. CEA is the process of and commitment to providing timely, relevant and actionable life-saving and life-enhancing information to communities. It is about using the most appropriate communication approaches to listen to communities’ needs, feedback and complaints, ensuring they can actively participate and guide Red Cross Red Crescent actions. CEA supports those involved in programmes and operations to adopt innovative approaches to better understand and engage with people and communities and help them address unhealthy and unsafe practices. It maximizes the Red Cross Red Crescent’s unique relationship with the community to help them speak out about the issues that affect them and influence decision and policy-makers to implement positive changes.

CEA will be an essential to operational success and building acceptance, trust and long-term resilience in communities. Integrating CEA approaches and activities into the food crisis operations will enhance quality by increasing reach, impact and levels of accountability to communities. The focus will be on measures to gain an insight into community behaviors and perceptions to design appropriate behavior change communication campaigns to support health, WASH and livelihoods and provide the affected population with timely, relevant and actionable life-saving and life-enhancing information. Responding National Societies will also be supported to put in place mechanisms to enhance levels of community participation, communication and feedback systems to improve community ownership of the response. A systematic and coordinated approach to engaging with communities will be essential in meeting the immediate needs of affected communities and ensure local communities are equal partners the response.

However as the food crisis in Africa becomes more complex and spreads to new areas, the demand for technical support to integrate CEA approaches and activities into response plans is growing. A dedicated CEA delegate is required to provide support and training to National Societies and IFRC operations teams across to ensure CEA is integrated into plans and activities in a systematic way and to a high quality. As food crisis operations span East and West Africa and now the Sahel, the CEA delegate will be expected to spend up to 70% of their time in the field, meaning extensive travel will be a required part of this position.

Job purpose

The CEA delegate will support National Society and IFRC food crisis operations teams to enhance the impact, reach and efficiency of emergency response operations through the integration of CEA activities and approaches. This includes community communication, participation and feedback systems, behaviour and social change communication, information as aid and evidence-based advocacy.

Job duties and responsibilities

Technical support to operations

· Identify how National Societies and IFRC Africa food crisis operations teams can enhance the quality of their operations by integrating and/or scaling up an appropriate mix of approaches and activities to engaging with affected people and communities.

· Ensure CEA activities and approaches are integrated in operational plans and budgets, and add value by helping the operation to meet its aims.

· Support the harmonisation of CEA interventions across different sectors, within and across different operations, to help mainstream best practices.

· Provide technical support to National Societies and IFRC Africa food crisis operations teams to:

o Ensure emergency assessments are transparent and participatory, and capture people’s information needs and trusted and preferred communication channels.

o Build community participation into operational planning, design and implementation.

o Strengthen and/or help set up feedback mechanisms, including processes to make sure feedback is analysed and acted upon by operational teams.

o Strengthen and/or help set up systems for sharing life-saving, useful and actionable information with affected people about Red Cross and Red Crescent services, from selection criteria to health advice, as part of information-as-aid activities.

o To increase their reach and impact by helping teams, such as health, water and sanitation and disaster risk reduction, to set up methods to gain a deeper understanding of local perceptions, beliefs, culture, practices and values and to implement innovative behaviour and social change communication activities.

o To find ways to involve affected people in assessing the impact of the operational response.

o To ensure women, children, the elderly, people with disabilities and other vulnerable groups have equal access to information channels and feedback mechanisms particular to their needs, and taking into account any specific protection issues.

Capacity building

· Provide targeted CEA training and mentoring support to National Society staff and volunteers and IFRC Africa food crisis operations teams.

· Support the rolling out and adaptation of CEA Movement tools, methodologies and activities, as defined in the CEA Movement guide and toolkit.

· Build the capacity of the National Societies to integrate CEA into their ways of working and support the development of exit strategies to map out which CEA activities and approaches can/should be sustained after the end of operations in order to support long term resilience-building efforts.

Coordination, representation and reporting

· Work closely with the IFRC CEA Regional Advisor for Africa to ensure there is consistency and sustainability between CEA in emergencies and CEA in long term programming within the region.

• Coordinate CEA efforts with Movement partners.

· Coordinate and identify partnership opportunities with other NGOs, humanitarian agencies, UN, private sector and Government through food crisis working groups.

· Identify opportunities for partnership with external organisations, including the use of technology and innovative approaches to enhance CEA.

· Ensure CEA data is included in existing Information Management systems and platforms so it can be used to inform decision-making processes at strategic and operational levels.

· Support evidence-based learning by supporting operational teams to assess and monitor levels of community engagement through research, impact surveys, perception studies and case studies.

• Support the positioning and visibility of Red Cross and Red Crescent CEA achievements and share data with the wider humanitarian network to inform and influence the overall response.

Click on the link below to applyhttp://www.ifrc.org/en/who-we-are/working-with-us/current-vacancies/?zone=9124