Specialist Advisor – Urban & Sanitation Hygiene, Project Malio

SEED is seeking to recruit a Specialist Advisor to work alongside the local project implementation and international project development teams to provide technical assistance, skills and experience from an international setting into the activities and capacity building of the project. Working closely with the Head of Project Development (WASH and Community Health), they will work with the team on reviewing the approach and specific activities, support training plans for local staff and partner associations, and leading monitoring and evaluation. The Specialist Advisor will lead donor reporting and external project communications, ensuring lessons from this project are captured in order to develop future SEED projects and to help inform international learning and best practice.

Responsibilities

Team support/capacity building
1. To work with the Head of Community Health and Project Coordinator in supporting the detailed activity plan for the project and its ongoing review.
2. To work with the project team in developing a range of activity plans and resources that can be used by SEED’s frontline workers and partner associations.
3. To work with the project team in developing monthly capacity building sessions for partner association members.
4. To support the Head of Community Health in ensuring partner activities are sustained and strengthened so as to form the basis of a WASH platform for Fort Dauphin.
5. To work closely with the staff and partner association members to exchange information and provide mutual support.
6. To work with the Head of Community Health and Head of Project Development (WASH and Community Health) to supervise and support the technical and operational activities of the staff involved in the project delivery.

MEL/specialist research
1. To work with the Head of Community Health and Head of Project Development (WASH and Community Health) to devise and conduct appropriate monitoring and evaluation activities to track the perception and outcomes of the project.
2. To provide technical assistance in the implementation and maintenance of the project’s monitoring and evaluation system in order to properly measure both process and outcome objectives.
3. To complete desk based research into best practice and advise on different approaches to respond to problems encountered.
4. To work with the Head of Community Health, Project Coordinator and Head of Project Development (WASH and Community Health) in using the research findings to inform project development of this and other similar SEED initiatives, and disseminate project learning through international journals and knowledge forums.

Communications/reporting
1. To work with the Head of Community Health to ensure SEED is positively represented in external meetings and affairs to maintain strong working partnerships with relevant Government officials, health and social services and community-based organisations.
2. To provide short, monitoring narrative reports on project findings to be presented in monthly meeting with the Community Health and Project Development teams.
3. To provide 6- and 12-month reports for stakeholders.
4. To provide regular social media updates and more formal articles, papers and learning notes for external publication as required.
5. Any other tasks that the Head of Project Development (WASH and Community Health) deems necessary within the broad outline of the role.

Person specification
Essential
- Degree in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, Community Health, International Development, Public Health, or related field
- Experience working/volunteering internationally in a sanitation and hygiene capacity
- Experience of designing, implementing and managing an activity-based project
- Experience of designing monitoring and evaluation strategies and tools
- Experience of analysing spreadsheets and databases
- Excellent communication skills, including a sound ability to adapt material for different audiences
- Experience of report writing for external donors and stakeholders
- Experience of capacity building and/or acting in a supervisory role
- Passion and motivation for the work and ability to enthuse staff and other volunteers
- Ability to work both independently and as part of a multicultural and multilingual team
- Experience of living and working in at least one developing country, preferably in sub-Saharan Africa
- Ability to adjust to life in another culture and a foreign language, working at all times with cultural sensitivity and respect

Desirable
- Experience of designing resource material in an innovative and participatory way
- A good understanding of international guidance and policy regarding urban sanitation and hygiene
- Experience in organising or managing multiple project activities at one time
- Knowledge of or willingness to learn French and/or Malagasy

Background to the project

Project Malio is a 3-year initiative funded by the UK’s Big Lottery Fund. The project combines lessons learnt from the pilot as well as SEED Madagascar’s highly successful rural Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) programme and other SEED projects including a previous urban sexual behaviour change initiative. Responding to the critical need for improvements to sanitation and hygiene in Fort Dauphin, Project Malio is engaging the whole town in a high-impact, broad-scale behaviour change programme that addresses traditional taboos around the subject of defecation. Malio works to motivate and mobilise the local community to eradicate the practice of open defecation and supports them to construct 800 household latrines for the most disadvantaged families and 13 school latrines for the town’s public (non-fee paying) schools.

Project Malio is now a quarter-way through its third year and is looking for a Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH) professional to support the project as activities are finalised and learning is synthesised to inform future urban sanitation projects. The successful applicant will thrive working in a collaborative manner across cultures and have a drive to make a real and lasting impact in global health.

Project Malio has been designed to be highly participatory in order to promote sustainability after the project ends. Alongside construction support for households and schools seeking to build or improve their latrines, activities include:

- Training and mentorship for motivated local associations to build their capacity to operate as professional implementing partners and to enable them to run key project activities within their communities.
- Sector-level action planning sessions, including the formation of beneficiary household working groups to monitor and support each other’s transition to latrine use.
- Town-wide mass mobilisations and high profile multimedia advertising campaigns to ensure the urban community’s messages to stop open defecation are widely publicised.
- Engaging educational activities and competitions for teachers and students to motivate and empower them to act as agents for change in the wider community.
- Support for a local association and authorities to sustainably manage one of the town’s key public latrines.


Job Email id: rachel.mather(at)seedmadagascar.org