Risk Communication and Community Engagement Consultant

Team/programme: Behavior Change and Community Health Team, DGH, SCUS

Location: Washington DC or remote working at global level with more time working with Asia and Eastern and Southern Africa

Contract Length: 7 months, with possibility of renewal

Dates of Contract: June – December 2021

Expected Hours of Work: 20 – 30 hours per week, 26 weeks

Consultancy purpose:

The risk communication and community engagement (RCCE) consultant will provide support to the SCUS RCCE Technical Leads in carrying out capacity building for RCCE and technical assistance to select regions and countries to support COVID-19 RCCE mitigation and vaccine demand efforts.

Specifically, the RCCE COVID-19 support work, the consultant will work closely with the RCCE Technical Leads to assist in developing training materials and support resources for building RCCE capacity in the different regions. The consultant will liaise between RCCE Technical Leads and country office (CO) staff to ensure communication, coordinate and organize meetings, and perform other knowledge management tasks necessary to move activities forward. The consultant will also co-facilitate the regional trainings and select country trainings as needed. In addition, the consultant will work closely with five (5) select country offices which are receiving funding for RCCE work, to carry out their RCCE activities. The consultant will coach and mentor each country’s RCCE lead with formative research, strategy and resource development and implementation, monitoring, feedback and strategy adaptation.

Scope of Role:

Reports to: SCUS Behavior Change and Community Health advisors

Staff reporting to this post: no direct reports but expected to provide coaching and mentoring support to country offices and regional technical advisors

Budget responsibilities: none

Role Dimensions: the role is expected to foster relationships with a wide range of SC stakeholders including the regional RCCE consultants, country office RCCE leads, regional advisors, and technical counterparts. The role is expected to engage with internal technical working groups and communities of practice, especially the global SBC/RCCE technical leads from SCUK and SCUS, the SCI SBC technical working group and the SCUS COVID19 vaccine task team, as needed for updates on the RCCE activities.

Context: Development and Humanitarian

Primary Technical Area: Health and Nutrition

Qualifications: Bachelor’s degree in a development field plus at least 8 years of demonstrated progressively more advanced experience working in Social Behavior Change/Community Engagement and/or Risk Communication and Community Engagement. Master’s degree preferred.

Experience and Skills:

• Experience working nationally and internationally with marginalized communities, and children.
• Expertise of RCCE concepts and guidance; how to strengthen trust between, and amongst communities, understand how communities are responding (who and what they listen to), creating two-way dialogue, etc. Ability to contextualize and provide guidance to different populations and support development and dissemination of relevant RCCE strategies.
• SBC expertise, good understanding of SBC concepts and frameworks (formative research, quantitative and qualitative data analysis, SBC Communication
• Experience in designing and/ or community engagement projects in development and/or humanitarian contexts- participatory approaches
• Ability to work with IT and monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning teams to support the application of virtual networks/digital platforms that foster community engagement with SC, and amongst themselves, to address emerging health, education, child protection situations and food security issues, as COVID-19 unfolds.
• Fluent English required, Spanish and/or French preferred.

For full information on this consultancy, including deliverables, please go here.