Communication Specialist (Advocacy), P-3, Fixed-Term, Thailand CO, Bangkok, #112179

It’s time to use your TALENTS to help UNICEF save lives and change lives of children. Apply now and take a journey with UNICEF towards making the world a better place for children

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, Advocacy

These days we advocate for laws and policies that better deliver on children’s rights while making sure that the human and financial resources needed to carry them out are available. We have around 50 staff members working with our partners to find new and innovative ways to protect the rights of all children in the country and to ensure that the benefits of Thailand’s rapid and impressive development reach the most disadvantaged children.

By bringing together all types of individuals concerned with child rights, we move closer to the day when every child in Thailand, regardless of gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic background or legal status, has a fair chance to grow up in a safe, healthy and protective environment and reach their full potential.

How can you make a difference?

Accountable for developing, managing, co-ordination, networking, implementing and monitoring advocacy strategies and associated products and activities on on-going basis with public audiences and non-financial supporters, including youth and volunteer engagement, with the objective of promoting awareness, understanding, support and respect for children’s and women’s rights, and support for UNICEF's mission, geared towards achieving advocacy impact in alignment with programme outcomes in the country office, and in a coordinated manner with regional and global cause framework priorities.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITY

1. Advocacy strategy: Ensure the Country Office has a clear advocacy strategy and associated work plan to get children’s issues into the public domain, strengthen and expand supporter engagement, strengthen political will in support of UNICEF's mission and objectives, and enhance the organization’s credibility and brand.

Duties & Tasks

• Develop, maintain and update the country advocacy strategy/ies and associated action plan/s around the country office advocacy priorities. Strategy and action plan include: lead office-wide advocacy prioritization exercise, a theory of change, an environmental and stakeholder assessment; objectives; target audiences; messages/tactics; resources; specific actions, activities and products; monitoring and evaluation of impact; success and opportunity for improvement; ongoing refinement of the strategy.
• UNICEF’s rights- and results-based programming approach and advocacy theory of change process is appropriately reflected in the advocacy strategy/ies, action plan/ audience and supporter engagement and products.
• Maintain close collaboration with programme sections, corporate engagement, PSFR teams, as well as senior management, for effective overall coordination and lead/convene office-wide discussions in advocacy prioritization and strategy development.
• Provide ongoing normative guidance to programme teams in advocacy initiatives in support of achieving programmatic goals.

2. Supporter Engagement: Ensure the Country Office has a clear non-financial supporter engagement plan, with success indicators and targets clearly defined in alignment with advocacy targets and campaigns, and audiences segmented, journeys designed, and activities and content developed and executed accordingly.

Duties & Tasks

• Develop, maintain and update the non-financial supporter engagement plan in alignment with advocacy initiatives, with supporter segmentation, meaningful journeys based on insights, associated engagement activities and content, ongoing testing of activities and content impact, overall monitoring and evaluation of impact that is documented; success and opportunity for improvement; ongoing refinement of the engagement journey and action plans.
• As part of the above, ensure the engagement plan integrates engagement of key supporters for UNICEF Thailand including young people, volunteers, and other types of captive audience (e.g. pledge signatories, newsletter subscribers, etc. with clear growth and engagement plans).
• Coordinate and convene office-wide discussions around non-financial supporter engagement, including with programme teams and PSFR (e.g. volunteer engagement for programme support).
• Oversee the detailed workplan development and the execution of the various elements of the non-financial supporter engagement plan.
• Lead the design and coordination of the Country Office’s integrated campaigns which combine both financial and non-financial supporter engagement, to ensure coherent supporter engagement plan around clearly defined and agreed objectives, and coordinate the effective implementation of the engagement plan by various team members as well as coordinate impact monitoring and documentation.

3. Networking and partnerships: Ensure the Country Office has a well maintained and continually developed contact list of individuals, groups, organizations and fora whose support is essential to/can assist in achieving the advocacy and communication objectives. Effective working relationships with the UN as well as other key partners. 

Duties & Tasks

• Develop, maintain and update partners contact list/database based on advocacy strategies and theories of change/stakeholder analysis and mapping conducted with the programme teams.
• Help establish, document, review and refine process of working collaboratively with advocacy partners, including meetings, joint projects, information sharing, etc.
• Ensure or enhance the quality, consistency and appropriateness of country-specific advocacy materials, activities, processes and messages shared with partners.
• Identify opportunities to strengthen the capacity of partners through appropriate advocacy and communication training, access to information, supplies and equipment and through knowledge sharing.
• Monitor, evaluate and share results and findings with partners.

4. National/regional/global priorities and campaigns: Ensure the Country Office has an effective process in place for integrating and taking action on UNICEF’s national and global communications priorities, campaigns and partnerships, disseminating these.

Duties & Tasks

• Support the UNICEF Thailand’s programmatic and advocacy objectives and strategies through development of country-level campaigns, materials and activities, and where appropriate, in alignment with regional and global priorities and cause-framework objectives. Advocacy planning and implementation should also take into account, where possible, the inclusion of work on global priorities and campaigns.
• Develop and deploy country office communication capacity to gather/facilitate the content and coverage of relevant country efforts. Use the opportunity to identify/highlight effective  programme activities and results.
• Ensure regular communication and co-ordination with relevant communication focal points in regional offices and headquarters divisions, especially around key advocacy initiatives that are related to the cause-framework and other global advocacy priorities.

5. Management: Ensure human resources (the advocacy team under the communication section) and financial resources (budget planning, management and monitoring) are both effectively managed and optimally used. 

Duties & Tasks

• Develop a work plan for the advocacy team members (including plans for campaigns and overall non-financial supporter activities, youth engagement, and volunteer engagement), monitor compliance and provide support and guidance to ensure objectives are met.
• Plan and monitor the use of communication budgetary resources. Approve and monitor the overall allocation and disbursement and liquidation of funds. Take appropriate actions to optimize use of funds.
• Identify, recruit and supervise staff, technical resources and consultants as necessary. Conduct and Implement effective performance planning, monitoring, performance development programme as required.
• Ensure communication effectiveness, efficiency and delivery as well as a rigorous and transparent approach to planning, monitoring and evaluation.

6. Monitoring and evaluation: Ensure that advocacy and communication baselines are established against which the achievement of objectives of the communication strategy are regularly evaluated; analysis is undertaken to continuously improve the effectiveness of communication strategy, approach and activities; results and reports are prepared and shared on a timely basis.

Duties & Tasks

• Provide technical support to ensure that a set of advocacy and engagement performance indicators are identified and adjusted as necessary, including as part of the office-wide advocacy strategies, and these advocacy and engagement indicators are incorporated or fed forwarded in the Annual Management Plan, Annual Work Plan, etc.
• Conduct timely and accurate monitoring and evaluation activities to ensure the advocacy and engagement objectives are met and the strategy is effective.
• Undertake lessons learned review of successful and unsuccessful advocacy and engagement experiences and share observations/findings with country, regional and HQ communication colleagues so that best practices benefit UNICEF’s communication work.

7. Capacity building and support: The country programme team are provided with professional expertise and advice on all aspects of advocacy, non-financial supporter engagement, and public campaign as required.

Duties & Tasks

• Advise UNICEF management and Programme colleagues on advocacy and engagement planning and implementation.
• Support advocacy and engagement activities through knowledge management, information exchange and building capacity of the country office team members. Enable appropriate advocacy training, access to information, as well as ongoing normative guidance to programme teams on advocacy initiatives, workplanning, ongoing monitoring of advocacy initiatives as well as documentation and applying lessons learned.
• Develop tools and guidance materials on advocacy to strengthen the overall advocacy capacity of programme team members.
• Provide ongoing support to the communication team members, under the supervision of the Chief of Communication, to ensure all UNICEF platforms and partnerships (e.g. digital platforms, media partnerships, celebrity engagement, are maximized and utilized effectively towards achieving the Country Office’s advocacy goals).
• Identify opportunities to strengthen the capacity of partners through appropriate advocacy training.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in Communication, Journalism, Public Relations, Marketing, or social science.
  (Or an undergraduate degree plus at least 12 years of demonstrated professional experience in the field of journalism, communications, external relations, public affairs, public relations, marketing, advocacy or corporate communications).
• A minimum of Five years of progressively responsible and relevant professional work experience in advocacy, supporter engagement in the non-profit sector (e.g. mobilizing and engaging supporters such as volunteers, advocates, young people), communication.
• Having knowledge/background on the following:
  • Advocacy management. Knowledge of theories and practices in advocacy planning and strategy as well as action plan development and implementation.
  • Supporter engagement knowledge including knowledge of supporter segmentation in a non-profit context, insight development, journey design, planning, execution, testing, and applying lessons learned.
  • Fundamentals for engaging supporters in various effective manners (online, off-line).
  • Computer systems/applications and network, including internet navigation, office applications, and specifically, interactive digital media.
  • Knowledge of United Nations or other international organizations.
  • Global human rights issues, specifically relating to children and women.
  • Gender equality and diversity awareness.

• Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergency is considered an asset.
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

For every Child, you demonstrate...

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability (CRITA) and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results.

The functional competencies required for this post are...

•  Leading and Supervising   [ I ]              •  Formulating Strategies and Concepts    [ II ]  

•  Relating and Networking   [ II ]              •  Persuading and Influencing    [ II ]                      

•  Applying Technical Expertise   [ II ]       •  Entrepreneurial Thinking  [ II ]             

View our competency framework at

http://www.unicef.org/about/employ/files/UNICEF_Competencies.pdf

Successful candidate will be offered an attractive remuneration package under the UN system.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Please send application no later than 8 December 2019

All UN including UNICEF candidates need to send an application letter together with Personal History (P-11) and Performance Evaluation Reports (PERs) of the last two years.

 FORM P11.doc

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles.

Remarks:

Mobility is a condition of international professional employment with UNICEF and an underlying premise of the international civil service.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.