Organizational context (where the job is located in the Organization)
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is the world’s largest volunteer-based humanitarian network. IFRC is a membership organisation 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 IFRC is part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. IFRC’s headquarters is in Geneva, with regional and country offices throughout the world.
COVID-19 is a global health crisis, an information crisis and increasingly a wider socio-economic crisis. One of the major learning of the past decade, from the West Africa Ebola outbreak to natural disasters and complex emergencies, is the critical need to engage communities from the very beginning of a response.
For humanitarian responses to be effective and have long-term positive impacts, humanitarian organizations need to work collectively to ensure a community-centred approach at all levels of a response. This means: facilitating access to life-saving information and essential services; proactively enabling the participation of affected communities in relief efforts; ensuring decisions at all levels within the humanitarian architecture are taken and adapted according to community feedback, concerns and priorities, as well as social insights; and supporting local responders to lead responses whenever possible. Such approaches help build trust with communities and local gatekeepers, increase the uptake of protective and health seeking behaviours, and ultimately ensure sustainability of humanitarian work. Living up to our 2017 IASC commitments on Accountability to Affected Populations as well as core protection and localisation principles is now more critical than ever.
Globally, the interagency coordination of Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) for the COVID-19 response is co-led by WHO, IFRC and UNICEF. In West and Central Africa the RCCE technical working group (TWG) is co led by IFRC and UNICEF. Thanks to a substantial funding grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), the current interagency structure is being scaled up to provide a collective service to improve collaboration among key partners at all levels, support the collection and analysis of multiple sources of data from communities, and provide technical support to a wide-range of actors at regional and country level. This will support the implementation of the RCCE strategy at country level, as well as the updated 2020 Coronavirus (2019‑nCoV) Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan and the COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan.
The IFRC and UNICEF Africa Regional offices in Nairobi will co-host the RCCE interagency coordination structure for West and Central Africa, which will include a coordinator (UNICEF), social science (UNICEF), information management (IFRC) and country surge support (UNICEF) positions.
Job purpose
The Interagency Regional Information Management Delegate for West and Central Africa, Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) will support the Regional RCCE Technical Working Group and the community feedback sub-working in data collection, analysis, visualisation, sharing and mapping. The focus of the IM delegate will be to ensure guidance, coaching and capacity building for developing and rolling out RCCE data processes (with focus on qualitative data), systems and tools in a coordinated manner across regions and countries. Ways to present the data for operational decision making and to help refine community engagement approaches will be developed and improved, including systematic sharing of the information with key partners and stakeholders engaged in the COVID-19 response.
Job duties and responsibilities
Information management support for the regional RCCE WG and the priority countries within the region
• Design and implement an Information Management Strategy and workplan for the RCCE TWG founded on an analysis of the current community engagement information landscape.
• Develop and maintain contact directories of Collective Service internal and external stakeholders.
• Compile and regularly update global 4Ws mapping based on regional and country mappings.
• Maintain close technical coordination with IM network (across partners) ensuring key learnings and developments are shared to enable greater IM for community engagement.
Data Analysis to improve situational awareness and support evidence-based planning and operations.
• Design, develop/adapt and manage RCCE COVID-19 related databases, spreadsheets and other qualitative/quantitative data tools/templates such as the necessary feedback data collection forms, coding system ensuring that the methodology, purpose and use of data collected is sound and clear.
• Initiate development of RCCE data Standard Operating Procedures tools and templates.
• Support regional RCCE coordination structures with more effective or efficient means of conducting needs assessments and perceptions surveys, simple community feedback data triangulation approaches, methods to triangulate feedback data across countries and summarise trends, as well as ways to visualise consolidated feedback data to help inform decision-making, etc.
• Coordinate with operational social science experts/groups on socio-cultural research; and synthesise/triangulate analysis to integrate key findings into response operations.
• Support the regions/countries (targeted support to National Societies) with collecting and managing qualitative research data (such as perceptions data and community insights/feedback) and relationship with epidemiological trends (COVID19 but also other diseases, outbreaks, health services use) to improve situational awareness and support evidence-based planning and operations and how it relates to community engagement.
• Identify products and processes to facilitate use of community feedback data to inform decisions.
• Identify and build capacity for creating/updating these products and processes, including qualitative data analysis principles and evaluation ethics, qualitative data interpretation and reporting.
• Provide qualitative data analysis training and technical assistance to staff and volunteers.
• Conduct a process evaluation of the collection and use of community feedback data.
Content Management through information sharing platforms to ensure timely and accessible content
· Develop and support a global inter-agency dashboard (connected to regional dashboards) to visualize evidence based on data coming from social research, community feedback, perception surveys and rumor tracking.
• Manage platforms and tools that support data collection and analysis, including sharing resources, tools and guidelines.
• Consolidate operational information on a regular schedule to support global COVID-19 related analysis and produce analytical products to inform decision-making at all levels.
• Data visualisation: Produce and update COVID-19 related RCCE information products and templates for regional adaptation such as interactive maps, static maps, reports, charts and infographics by turning RCCE data into graphical products to convey messages and a storyline.
Knowledge management to promote dissemination of knowledge and information
• Promote knowledge sharing through the Collective Service’s operational processes and systems by, among others, strengthening links between knowledge sharing and the information systems, and improving integration among information systems in the common service and broader RCCE coordination group, to facilitate seamless exchange of information across systems.
• Develop processes for capture, storage, validation and retrieval of knowledge; both within the Collective Service and externally with others.
• Promote collaborative tools to facilitate sharing of ideas and work among internal teams and external partners.
Identify and mitigate risks working with the Data Protection Legal Advisor risks, harm or opportunities regarding the IM, data process and outputs.
Education
- Relevant university degree or higher education, preferably in management, social sciences or international development or demonstrated equivalent experience.
- Relevant Information Analysis or inter Agency analysis training.
- IFRC Emergency Needs Assessments and Planning (ENAP) training or relevant Inter Agency Needs Assessments related training.
- IFRC Humanitarian Information Analysis Course (HIAC) or relevant Inter Agency analysis related training.
- IFRC Mobile Data Collection and Survey Design Training or relevant Inter Agency mobile data.
Experience
- At least five (5) years of experience in humanitarian and health emergencies with experience in undertaking and managing health information and qualitative data analysis in operations (at least 3 years in the humanitarian/health emergencies field context).
- Experience in setting up and managing community feedback analysis approaches and systems.
- Experience within the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
- Experience in an international organization or NGO.
Knowledge and Skills
- Good understanding of - or training in - current developments in the field of behavioural and social sciences, research approaches.
- Basic understanding of social statistics
- Demonstrated ability in manipulating large data sets and in using data analysis tools, with focus on qualitative data analysis
- Good analytical skills and knowledge of quantitative, qualitative and participatory research methodologies and analysis
- Proven Information Management and data skills in the areas of mobile data collection, data visualisation, including mapping and M&E.
- Demonstrated familiarity in using KoBo / Open Data Kit, QGIS, ESRI, Tableau and Illustrator
- Ability to get consensus and collaboration across many operational units; ability to explain complex concepts in layman's language; ability to generate enthusiasm; ability to communicate with all levels of management and staff.
- Demonstrated excellent written and oral communication skills and the ability to clearly and accurately convey information.
Languages
- Fluently spoken and written English and French
- Good command of another IFRC official language (Portuguese, Spanish or Arabic)
How to apply:
https://www.ifrc.org/en/who-we-are/working-with-us/current-vacancies/job-description/?id=77395