Program Officer - Strategic Communication at Breakthrough ACTION

Summary

The Program Officer – Strategic Communication will provide technical guidance and capacity strengthening for Social and Behaviour Change (SBC) and Communication for Development (C4D) to government ministry, department, and agencies (MDAs).

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Identify advocacy opportunities and roadmap to inform the development of context-specific advocacy and community engagement strategies for COVID in collaboration with government MDAs;
• Support a coordinated demand generation response to address vaccine hesitancy, improve testing and practice of public health and social measures for COVID in collaboration with government MDAs;
• Support the conduct of stakeholder analysis and political economy analysis in the context of vaccine hesitancy through, desk reviews, interviews, and surveys;
• Provide mentorship and technical assistance on the application of SBC approaches in the design and roll out of high-quality SBC interventions to the key units within MDAs;
• Ensure close and effective collaboration with the media actors and civil society for COVID-19 vaccination demand generation activities;
• Support MDAs to develop, review, pretest, refine, and finalize of SBC materials and tools for vaccine demand creation;
• Support the preparation of concept notes, training plans, stories, key messages and articles for targeted advocacy and community engagement at subnational and national levels;
• Participate in forums relevant to SBC to collect and share best practices and promote Breakthrough ACTION’s work;
• Other duties as identified by supervisor and/or Abuja country office program leads.

Supervisory Responsibilities

This position has no direct supervisory responsibilities.

Minimum Qualifications and Skills

• Masters in Public Health with first university degree in social sciences, behavioral sciences, development sciences, communications, IT or public health from an accredited/recognized institute.
• At least 6 plus years of related experience, at the national level, in Advocacy Communication and Social Mobilization (ACSM), health promotion, emergency management, part of which is working in vaccine acceptance and demand.
• Proven experience in in the development and implementation of ACSM strategies and plans.
• Previous work experience interacting or implementing USAID-funded or donor funded health programs is strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated application of technical principles and concepts in social and behavior change, communication, or social marketing is required.
• Ability to work collaboratively and proactively with diverse stakeholders including ministries, departments and agencies.
• Experience in developing and coordinating data collection, processing, and analysis systems from multiple sources or program areas is desired.
• Excellent organizational, problem-solving skills and attention to details is essential.
• Excellent communication skills (written & spoken) in English language is required.

·       Excellent technical writing and oral presentation skills highly desired.

• Essential knowledge of Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE).
• Ability to work within government MDA.