National Consultant-Polio, for 11.5 months, Gardez Afghanistan (for Afghan Nationals only)

Under the direct supervision of the Polio Team Lead/Social and Behaviour Change Specialist, the National Polio Consultant will coordinate the Polio programme in the Southeast region, focusing on regular community engagement interventions, monitoring, and information management functions in close coordination with colleagues at the Gardez outpost. The purpose of the post is to help ensure the quality assurance of the Polio programme, particularly in reducing refusals, rolling out key M&E work and tools, and supporting creating the data and information management systems in the four Southeastern Provinces. The person will also ensure that reliable and timely data and information is available for Polio programme planning, monitoring, and evaluation purposes. The post holder reports to the SBC Specialist /Polio Team Lead in Gardez with technical oversight, support and guidance from the Polio-SBC and Polio-M&E teams in Kabul.

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, a Hero 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=unicef+afghanistan 

How can you make a difference? 

Afghanistan is still one of the last two polio-endemic countries in the world with Pakistan. Despite rigorous efforts to achieve polio-free status in 2021, four cases of wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV-1) and 45 cases of circulating Vaccine Derived Polio Virus type 2 (cDVPV-2) were reported in the country. And as of November 2022, only 2 cases of WPV-1 and one cDVPV-2 have been confirmed in Paktika and Helmand provinces, respectively. 

Based on administration data, several challenges remained, and these resulted in high numbers of children missing vaccinations; These include;  the adoption of suboptimal site-based campaign modalities; security incidents or threat information creating the need for low-profile campaigns; poor campaign quality; fewer women engaged; refusals; rumours and misinformation; difficulty collecting data; high levels of population movement; low rates of routine immunisation; and interference in the recruitment of front-line polio workers continue to challenge polio eradication efforts in Afghanistan.

Scope of Work and Key Deliverables: The scope of work for the Polio National Consultant is provided below.

Polio programme implementation:

• Implement and monitor the Polio programme in Paktia, Paktika, Khost and Gazni Provinces of the Southeast region.
• Map out key influencers, and initiate/maintain a high level of engagement of community leaders and influencers through training and active participation in each polio campaign and regular Polio communication interventions. 
• Support the team to roll out Polio social and behaviour change action plans reaching more families, improving awareness, and addressing reasons for missed children in nomads, resistant, and, if possible, inaccessible polio-compromised areas.
• With the support of the PCOs and DCOs, update the list of community, religious leaders and Nomadic elders engaged in polio eradication and leverage all opportunities increased ease coverage of Polio.
• Support the development of integrated (with routine immunisation teams) community engagement micro plans.

Polio Information Management:

• Develop simple, user-friendly monitoring and reporting tools and work closely with the Polio team to design, test and roll out M&E tools and techniques for collecting and analysing M&E data.
• Ensuring data from partners and stakeholders is periodically and consistently collected and stored in the established reporting platform.  Facilitating data entry and visualisation using Power BI or other visualisation platforms at the office level and thematically as needed.
• Support the development and strengthening of the existing data management system for monitoring and reporting service provision, particularly on the refusals.
• Preparing and disseminating periodic Information Management reports/infographics/dashboards to programmes and implementing partners.
• Undertake and oversee regular field monitoring visits to ensure technical compliance and timely execution of projects vis-à-vis approved plans and baselines.
• Regular compilation of monitoring reports to be systematically updated in the online monitoring system in coordination Polio M&E team and other key stakeholders.

Polio Capacity Building:  

• Contribute to capacity building of Provincial and District Polio Communication Officers to ensure quality cascaded training and regular update of social mobilisers list per districts and settlements.
• Guide to Provincial and District Polio Communication teams in capacity development/demand creation and defaulter tracking to reduce refusals. 
• Facilitate the development of a training package on information management systems, including guidelines, presentations, demos, and toolkits for PCOs, DCOs, governmental partners, WHO, NGOs and CSOs.  
• Facilitate regular community engagement sessions with the key stakeholders to ensure successful polio vaccination across four Provinces of the Southeast part of Afghanistan.

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

Education:

• A University Degree in social and behavioral science, sociology, anthropology, psychology, education, communication, public health, public relations or another related social science field is required  

Experience:

• Two years of professional experience in M&E, data management, design and analysis, communications and public advocacy and related areas at any reputed NGOs, government and UN agencies.
• Proven experience using advanced Excel. Candidate, who knows at least one statistical computing software, such as R, STATA, SAS, and SPSS, would get preference.
• Strong analytical and report-writing skill is required for the job.
• Proven experience in Data visualisation using graphic and mapping software like Tableau or PowerBI

Language Requirements:

• Fluency in English, both writing and speaking, is required. The candidate must be fluent in local languages.

For every Child, you demonstrate… 

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS). 

To view our competency framework, please visit here. 

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment. 

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 be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check. 

Remarks:  

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

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws. 

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.