The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) is a global health organization committed to saving lives and reducing the burden of disease in low-and middle-income countries, while strengthening the capabilities of governments and the private sector in those countries to create and sustain high-quality health systems that can succeed without our assistance. For more information, please visit: http://www.clintonhealthaccess.org 

CHAI is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and is committed to providing an environment of fairness, and mutual respect where all applicants have access to equal employment opportunities. CHAI values diversity and inclusion, and recognizes that our mission is best advanced by the leadership and contributions of people with diverse experience, backgrounds, and culture.

CHAI, in partnership with its India affiliate William J Clinton Foundation (WJCF), works in close partnership with and under the guidance of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) at the Central and States' levels on an array of high priority initiatives aimed at improving health outcomes. Currently, CHAI supports government partners across projects to expand access to quality care and treatment for HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, tuberculosis, COVID-19, common cancers, sexual and reproductive health, immunization and essential medicines.

Talent is the fundamental driver of WJCF’s success in helping save lives and reduce the burden of disease. WJCF’s organizational values reflect its relentless endeavour of hiring, nurturing, empowering, and celebrating diverse and high calibre individuals who come together to work as cohesive teams. WJCF places a high premium on providing its staff with an enabling environment that encourages entrepreneurship, humility, respect, equal share of voice and fosters high impact innovation to address some of the most challenging healthcare issues.

Project Background

“Leveraging entrepreneurship to provide access to safe drinking water” is a project rolled out with an objective to ensure access to safe drinking water to rural communities in areas which are affected with water quality issues. One major concern of water quality is high concentration of fluoride in ground water. Long term exposure to fluoride can cause fluorosis- a condition that affect teeth and bones. Fluorosis also brings down the body’s iron absorption capacity and thus intensifies anemia and malnutrition. The project sets up up Community Water Treatment Plants (CWTPs), run by women collectives or Self Help Groups (SHGs)  ensuring door-step delivery of treated safe drinking water to affected villages in their catchment areas.  Therefore, the project minimizes water-borne diseases and anemia induced malnutrition, while enabling livelihood to rural women.

Program Overview

Since 2016, WJCF has been working towards reducing malnutrition and anemia among children, adolescent girls, women of reproductive age and mothers in Madhya Pradesh. To this end, WJCF, under the leadership of government of Madhya Pradesh (GoMP), has been implementing comprehensive set of interventions to enable seamless delivery of public health and nutrition schemes/services and thereby reduce anemia and malnutrition.

While it is important to enable service delivery efficiencies to directly manage health and nutrition indicators, it is also critical to improve access to safe drinking water since drinking water is an underlying cause to several health conditions. Natural chemical contaminations such as presence of fluoride are particularly challenging, because the only way to tackle is to enable access to alternate drinking water, that is free of contamination. Excess consumption of fluoride causes fluorosis which causes corrosion of enamel and swollen gums (in children between 1-4 years) and long-term intake of fluoride causes skeletal degeneration, which retards absorption of calcium. Fluorosis also reduces the absorption of key micronutrients such as iron and calcium, thereby increasing the risk of anaemia to the exposed population, particularly pregnant women.

To address this issue, a unique community entrepreneurship-based model of a Community Water Treatment Plant (CWTP) was successfully piloted in one of the blocks that is affected by high fluorosis. The Public Health Engineering Department (PHED), under the flagship program, “Jal Jeevan Mission” (JJM) plans to scale up the model through women collectives or Self-help Groups (SHGs). WJCF is supporting this ambitious plan by providing technical and program management support to the GoMP.

Position Summary

In order to drive the aforementioned scale up, WJCF is seeking a highly motivated and entrepreneurial individual for the role of Assistant Program Officer. The Assistant Program Officer will report to the Program Manager in Bhopal and will work with stakeholders and PHED officers to drive the scale up by providing analytical and operational support. The candidate will also work with the State Rural Livelihood Mission to support identification of community-based organizations/groups (like Cluster Level Federation, Village Organization, Self-Help Groups etc.) to operationalize the CWTPs.

The ideal candidate would have rich implementation experience in the field of health/sanitation, community-based livelihoods and would also have strong stakeholder management abilities. CHAI places great value on relevant personal qualities: resourcefulness, responsibility, tenacity, independence, energy, and work ethic. 

Strategic

• Support the program for Access to Safe Drinking water and drive the strategic roadmap for ‘Access to Safe Drinking Water’  
• Assist the Program Manager in donor communication and reporting as per the requirement of the project
• Support in developing business models (financial modelling) aimed at increasing efficiency of the entire CWTP vis a vis keeping the system sustainable.

Program Operations

• Provide research and analytical support to the department as per requirement.
• Identifying innovative models for promoting access to safe drinking water by involving community and driving end-to-end plant operations in the identified geographical span
• Liaison with the State and district level officials for efficient and timely execution of the project in the identified districts.
• Establishing convergence with the other line departments like Tribal Welfare, National Health Mission, Women and Child Development, Education etc. for efficient operations of the CWTPs
• Map relevant government welfare schemes (with budgetary outlays corresponding utilization data) at national and state level
• Develop Standard Operating Procedure (SOPs) incorporating the best practices on how to effectively manage CWTPs
• Design IEC collaterals and event calendars for conducting awareness generation sessions among the communities
• Provide handholding support to the SHGs/entrepreneurs and build their capacities for efficient operationalization and management of the CWTPs for the identified districts

Program Monitoring

• Support Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) through conducting baseline/end line surveys
• Develop monitoring frameworks, tools and reporting templates for bringing in efficiency and ensuring transparency in operations
• Monitoring operations of the CWTPs and ensure submission of regular reports and analysis to PHED and SRLM leadership
• Manage the field team comprising of staff at Bhopal office and field coordinators
• Travel to various project blocks at a short notice as required by the Department/Program Manager
• Perform other responsibilities as requested by program or country leadership

• Master’s/Bachelor’s degree in management, economics, engineering, computer science, statistics, operations research economics or allied areas
• Minimum 2 years of relevant work experience in the public sector including engaging with state, district, and block officials
• Experience of managing projects involving promoting access to safe drinking water to vulnerable communities will be an added advantage
• Experience of managing projects involving livelihood generation or entrepreneurship building particularly in rural areas is preferred
• Strong data analytics and communication (written and verbal) skills
• Experience drafting proposals and collaborative documents
• Entrepreneurial mind-set, including ability to work independently, self-motivate, managing teams and propose and implement new initiatives
• Motivated to travel frequently to meet the needs of the program and deliver impact effectively
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office, particularly Excel, PowerPoint and Word. Experience on data analysis tools such as SPSS, Tableau etc. can be an added advantage
• Ability to think strategically, handle ambiguity, and solve problems in a fast-paced, limited-structure
• Experience of working in Madhya Pradesh will be an added advantage

Skills & Traits:

• Stakeholder management
• Should be able to multitask with multiple stakeholders keeping WJCF ideals and goals in mind
• Effective and prompt communication
• Ability to respond to critical situations in an effective and efficient manner

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