Community Engagement Assistant

UNOPS is an operational arm of the United Nations, supporting the successful implementation of its partners’ peacebuilding, humanitarian and development projects around the world. Our mission is to help people build better lives and countries achieve sustainable development.

UNOPS areas of expertise cover infrastructure, procurement, project management, financial management and human resources.

Working with us

UNOPS offers short- and long-term work opportunities in diverse and challenging environments across the globe. We are looking for creative, results-focused professionals with skills in a range of disciplines.

Diversity

With over 4,000 UNOPS personnel and approximately 7,000 personnel recruited on behalf of UNOPS partners spread across 80 countries, our workforce represents a wide range of nationalities and cultures. We promote a balanced, diverse workforce — a strength that helps us better understand and address our partners’ needs, and continually strive to improve our gender balance through initiatives and policies that encourage recruitment of qualified female candidates.

Work life harmonization

UNOPS values its people and recognizes the importance of balancing professional and personal demands.

UNOPS Hub in Amman

The UNOPS Hub in Amman implements projects in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen, in partnership with bilateral donors, national governments, and other UN agencies.  With an established presence across the region, the office runs operations including large-scale procurement, project development, and technical management, and provides financial, human resources, and infrastructure-related services. The functional objective of UNOPS Hub in Amman is to deliver its projects in an efficient and effective manner and in line with the principles, rules and regulations of UNOPS, in order to support the response to the current needs and national priorities in the region.

The incumbent is responsible to abide by security policies, administrative instructions, plans and procedures of the UN Security Management System and that of UNOPS.

UNOPS is committed to achieving a fully diverse workforce.

Background Information – Job Specific

The Iraq Information Center (IIC) was launched in 2015 following an inter-agency assessment into the information and communication needs of displaced populations in Iraq. Responding to one of the most complex humanitarian crises in the world, the Humanitarian Country Team agreed to the establishment of an inter-agency accountability mechanism that allows affected populations to directly influence the evolution of humanitarian response in Iraq.

The IIC is implemented by UNOPS and is funded by a range of partners. Since its launch, the IIC has handled more than 400,000 calls, giving information to almost 2.5 million individuals. The IIC’s primary objective is to promote two-way communication between affected populations to:

• Empower communities through the provision of accessible and timely information on how to access humanitarian services and resources required to improve their situation;
• Help ensure efficient and effective coordination of humanitarian actors operating in Iraq by collecting and circulating information about the urgent needs and priorities of affected populations, as well as the information gaps between them and delivering actors;
• Support an environment of transparency and accountability by establishing an easy-to-access and safe mechanism through which critical feedback and complaints can be submitted and referred to humanitarian actors to influence humanitarian programming and shape advocacy.

Purpose and Scope of Assignment

UNOPS is seeking Community Engagement Assistant (CEA) to implement field-level outreach to both affected populations and humanitarian partners. The CEA will conduct community and partner outreach in South and Central Iraq through activities such as focus group discussions and trainings. Outreach activities, which targets at IDPs, returnees, refugees and asylum seekers; and the members of the host community, will include a special focus on communicating with vulnerable members of society, including women, children, the disabled and the elderly. This will lead to increased awareness of the call centre among beneficiaries, greater community feedback on the effectiveness of call centre's operations, and greater partner feedback on their ability to follow up on feedback and referrals.

Under the overall guidance and supervision of the Community Engagement Associate, the CEA will be responsible for the following tasks:

• Implement community mobilization and information dissemination strategies with the IIC communications team: conducting group discussion sessions on the call center; and information dissemination and awareness raising sessions in the community to promote and encourage access to the call center and the services of its partners;
• Ensure a mix of Community Engagement interventions are used to increase chances of reaching displaced and vulnerable affected populations, especially women and children;
• Engage community members and influencers through ongoing dialogues and discussions to take action to document serious protection concerns and share feedback on services;
• Contribute to the development of information, education and communication materials, messages and activities in collaboration with the IIC communications team, supporting the message creation and translation appropriately for the community and target audiences and are tested before dissemination;
• In collaboration with the IIC communications team, assist in the development and implementation of an outreach strategy and plan that also targets the most vulnerable members of society;
• Implement field-level training briefings on the IIC to humanitarian actors when required;

• Ensure the quality, consistency and appropriateness of IIC communication and visibility materials and tools that are developed, produced, and disseminated to local communities, government officials, other partners;
•  Strengthen the IIC’s ability to promote and enhance Accountability to Affected Populations through the provision of timely, accurate, and relevant information sharing, and in particular through the documentation of impact;
• Support the IIC Liaison Officer based in Baghdad, increasing IIC visibility among partners by distributing visibility materials;
• Support compelling social media content for digital platforms and systematically grow IIC’s digital community and deepen engagement across platforms;
• Regularly come up with ideas for engaging social media content and campaigns, working with relevant colleagues to assess feasibility, and through exploring new partnerships for content/engagement;
• If required, support other team members to monitor and moderate social media channels, flagging risk and opportunities to deepen engagement;
• Perform any other duty requested by his/her supervisor.

• Support the Information Management, IIC communications team and Project Manager in their engagement with donors and partners to share evidenced-based data on needs and caller perception of accessibility to and relevance of services to which the IIC refers callers;

• To advocate and support mainstreaming of Accountability to Affected Population in all efforts to make humanitarian programming more accountable, enhances beneficiary participation and overall quality;
• To advocate and support government and humanitarian agencies to also play a key role to ensure communication and information as well as accountability is incorporated into tools and services including needs assessments, situation reports, websites and other information products and services;
• Support and assist partners in using the tools to aid in implementing the Commitments on Accountability to Affected Population;

Deliverables:

The Community Engagement Assistant will, as part of their daily activity, design and implement a field-level outreach strategy to enhance the call center’s engagement with affected populations, humanitarian field actors and partners. Deliverables include, but are not limited to:

• At least twelve (12) field visits per month, including camp locations and non-camp urban or informal settlement locations in Iraq: assess awareness gaps; conduct focus group discussion; deliver trainings and briefings; engage with vulnerable members of society; disseminate relevant outreach and IEC materials; track rumors, correct misinformation.
• The Community Engagement Assistant will submit mission reports for each mission within established time frame, including his/her recommendations. Findings from these reports will feed into evidenced-based data reports on needs shared at an ICCG level.
• At least two (2) meetings per month with key partners to conduct awareness raising sessions, identify needs, and share trend analysis. During these meetings, the Community Engagement Assistant will request updates to the call center service directory by sharing and returning a template designated by the Information Management team.
• Twelve (12) presentations per year on activities and findings during community engagement activities, consolidated with inputs from the Community Engagement Associate, to be shared with the Information Management team and Project Manager for quarterly board and/or donor meetings.

Other duties as required:

• Performing inventory and placing orders for visibility materials, as well as arranging delivery to partners who request them,
• Actively engage with partners to coordinate field visits, as these are contingent upon partner resources and presence in the field environment,
• Document issues raised by partners and the affected population to share with management for regular impact analysis,
• Suggest to also include issues on lessons learned from CE activities and reflect them in the highlight reports prepared by the PM,
• Communicate with partners to update the IIC’s directory for humanitarian services.

Impact of results

The outcomes of the role impact UNOPS IIC project. The work of the Community Engagement Assistant contributes to achievement of UNOPS mission and vision:

• To expand the capacity of the United Nations system and its partners to implement peace building, humanitarian and development operations that matter for people in need.
• To satisfy UNOPS partners with management services that meet world-class standards of quality, speed and cost-effectiveness. 

In particular, the results of the Community Engagement Assistant contribute to the following strategic goals:

• Enhanced accountability and transparency, through the delivery of services that meet or exceed expectations
• Enhanced UNOPS operational capacity through improved process efficiency and effectiveness of UNOPS practices

Monitoring and Progress Controls

• Assessment of task completion
• Successfully meeting deadlines

Education 

Bachelor degree in International Affairs, Business Administration, Management, Social Sciences, Economics, Political/Security/Development Studies, or other relevant discipline, with 1 year of relevant working experience. Or, six (5) years of relevant experience with secondary education.

Work Experience

Required:

• Proven experience in community engagement, including conducting focus group discussions,
• Proven experience in report writing, in particular for emergency humanitarian contexts,
• Strong oral communication skills, with fluency in both English and Arabic is required,
• At ease making public presentations and liaising with external stakeholders,
• Strong experience in usage of Microsoft Office software package (MS Word and rudimentary Excel),
• Knowledge of Accountability to Affected Populations, and Communicating with Communities.

Desired:

• Knowledge of current political, economic, and social fabric of Iraq,
• Working knowledge of communicating with disaster affected populations and protection issues.

• Fluency in both English and Arabic is required.
• Knowledge of Kurdish language will be an advantage.

1. Contract type: ICA
2. Contract level: LICA Support level 5
3. Contract duration: Ongoing ICA – ‘Open-ended, subject to organizational requirements, availability of funds and satisfactory performance.’

• Please note that the closing date is midnight Copenhagen time
• Applications received after the closing date will not be considered.
• Only those candidates that are short-listed for interviews will be notified.
• Qualified female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.
• UNOPS seeks to reasonably accommodate candidates with special needs, upon request.
• Work life harmonization - UNOPS values its people and recognizes the importance of balancing professional and personal demands. We have a progressive policy on work-life harmonization and offer several flexible working options. This policy applies to UNOPS personnel on all contract types
• UNOPS seeks to reasonably accommodate candidates with special needs, upon request.
• For staff positions only, UNOPS reserves the right to appoint a candidate at a lower level than the advertised level of the post
• The incumbent is responsible to abide by security policies, administrative instructions, plans and procedures of the UN Security Management System and that of UNOPS.  

It is the policy of UNOPS to conduct background checks on all potential recruits/interns.
Recruitment/internship in UNOPS is contingent on the results of such checks.