Advocacy and Capacity Building Specialist at Plan International

Location: Owerri, Imo  Application Link

Location: Abia   Application Link

Role Purpose/Program Summary

• The USAID funded Effective Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (E-WASH) program, seeks to recruit experts to support the implementation of an ambitious urban water and sanitation sector transformation agenda. The program is being implemented in six states of Imo, Sokoto, Taraba, Abia, Niger and Delta. E-WASH is a 4 year USAID funded (generally until February 2022) technical assistance program working in collaboration with state governments to improve urban water service delivery by strengthening the governance, financial, and technical viability of six state water boards (SWBs) in Nigeria. The overall goal is improvement of urban water and sanitation service delivery.

Dimensions of the Role

• The Advocacy and Capacity Building Specialist will serve as key liaison with target state Water Boards, state Ministries of Water Resources i.e (the political leadership, State Water Board employees and consumers), working as part of the state E-WASH team to facilitate the process of establishing and implementing activities that lead to a successful transformation agenda.
• The objective of this position is to improve WASH service delivery through heightened and more effective coordination, advocacy, capacity building and strategic communication efforts and also leading on Gender, Equity and Social Inclusion integration and initiatives that will spur transformational change in the sector at the state level.

Key Roles/Responsibilities

• Identify specific capacity building requirements and define the skills needed for the different participating stakeholders
• Work with other specialists on the E-WASH state team to identify training needs, how and who should implement the training and even location of the training.
• Strengthen capacity of local officials (mainly of the SWB) to engage with citizens, include them in participatory planning processes, and incorporate their priorities into planning documents.
• Facilitate citizen participation in collaborative decision making, management, and monitoring related to urban WASH service delivery.
• Support CSOs to access and effectively utilize the Civil Society Engagement Fund to improve social accountability, monitoring, and sanitation/hygiene promotion for improved access to and quality of WASH services.
• Support technical monitoring of grants.
• Provide technical assistance, advice and guidance to CSOs focused on WASH issues, particularly in the area of inclusion of marginalized citizens, advocacy and monitoring for service delivery, and developing networks and platforms of CSOs
• Facilitate the development of a strategy focusing on gender and pro-poor transformational approaches and support the implementation of activities to increase CSO and other stakeholder participation in utility reform processes (tariff adjustments, service delivery monitoring) to support sustainability of project efforts.
• Ensure gender is integrated into all capacity building tools, methodologies, and activities.
• Leverage and enhance existing strengths within CSOs, facilitating opportunities to learn from each other's effective strategies.
• Support in the development and implementation of advocacy plans
• Organization of coordinated strategic activities to bring about sustained political change, adapted to the specific context in focus within the state.
• Design and implement advocacy activities for the urban water sector reforms in the state.

Technical Expertise, Skills and Knowledge
Qualifications and Experience:

• At least a Master's degree in Communications, Media Studies, Journalism, Development or such related fields.
• A minimum of master’s degree and 6 years of experience or Bachelor's Degree and 10 years of experience post qualification experience in any of the above areas
• Experience in designing communication strategies for reforms -in any sector.
• Proven experience in working for or with civil society to drive a reform agenda
• Experience in designing social accountability tools, mobilizing the key stakeholders including media, the political leadership and consumers to support reforms
• Experience in mobilizing high political level buy in to reforms or transformation, gathering high level buy in for reforms.
• Expertise in training and capacity building and/or customer satisfaction and engagement.
• Knowledge and experience in designing gender inclusive development programs.