Humanitarian Liaison Officer Job in Dadaab Kenya

Humanitarian Liaison Officer (Dadaab, Kenya)

Description

Please note: this is a 6 month position, July 2012 - December 2012.

Background:

Working in partnership with Star FM of Nairobi, Kenya, the Dadaab Humanitarian Information Service (HIS) project aims to address communication gaps between refugee populations and humanitarian organizations by providing essential life-saving information that informs, protects, empowers, facilitates dialogue and affects behavior change in the target audiences of camp residents.

The project will also assist the humanitarian sector to be more effective by enabling communities to better understand aid operations, access relief services and communicate with humanitarian agencies. 

The project will help to establish, train, and operate a community radio station run by Star FM and staffed by youth from the refugees and host communities that is being built in the camp to respond directly to the information and communication needs of those residing and working there.

Scope of Work:

The Humanitarian Liaison Officer (HLO) will play a vital role in the implementation of this 12-month groundbreaking project in Dadaab, helping to link the work of a newly-constructed radio station with the humanitarian community, and visa versa. Specifically, the HLO will support the project in the following capacities:

• Developing, maintaining, and establishing excellent working relationships with a wide range of humanitarian organizations and government representatives, ensuring they understand and participate in the project, the role of the Internews team and what it has to offer them in their daily work.
• Representing the coordination and liaison work of the project and actively participate in all relevant humanitarian coordination fora to identify critical information needs of camp populations.
• Propose story ideas for production as required (e.g. sourcing stories and information from different stakeholders and assisting production team in arranging interviews; helping with the production when necessary; and arranging logistics and meetings/visits for the production team, as required).
• In coordination with the rest of the team, ensuring that feedback gained from project activities is made available to humanitarian organizations (i.e. brief presentations at coordination meetings and other relevant fora, etc), and government officials, as required.
• Interfacing between humanitarian organizations and local journalists and correspondents from the radio station to build trust and facilitate information exchange between them according to the project objectives.
• Ensuring the distribution of regular rundowns of HIS programs via email and other means to all humanitarian stakeholders to strengthen the liaison role with humanitarians.
• Maintaining and updating a database with all the relevant contacts (i.e. spokespersons and focal points) from the different organizations and government departments involved in humanitarian response.
• Compiling regular situation reports on the outputs and activities of the coordination and liaison effort and the overall Internews response.
• Producing regular multimedia materials (i.e. blog posts, photos, podcast…) documenting the life of the project for external audiences, as required.
• Contributing to overall written program reporting, as required.
• Contributing to fundraising efforts including, but not limited, to PR/media exercises and proposal writing.
• Liaising with international media and promote the project Internews' work, as required.
• Any other duties as required.

Qualifications:

• Fluency in spoken and written English; knowledge of Swahili or Somali an asset.
• Experience working in relief operations in challenging environments.
• Significant experience using media and communications in humanitarian contexts.
• Very good working knowledge of the mandates and modalities of the international humanitarian sector.
• Experience working in Sub-Sahara Africa will be an asset.
• Proven interpersonal and networking skills to liaise authoritatively with figures from the aid and donor communities and host governments.
• Sensitivity to cross-cultural dynamics in the work place.
• Ability to work collaboratively as part of a team in a challenging and a highly fluid environment.
• An understanding of the vision/mission, core values and objectives of Internews.
• Understanding of and passion for the area of communications with disaster-affected communities.
• Excellent communication and reporting skills, both written and oral.
• Excellent administrative and organizational skills.
• Knowledge of Ushahidi, FrontlineSMS, mobile technology and citizen journalism and familiarity with ways to leverage social media will be an asset.
• Psychological resilience and a sense of humor.
• Relevant university degree.

More about Internews in Dadaab:

Over twenty years after the first Somali refugees fled the crisis that ousted President Siad Barre, more than 982,000 Somalis are now refugees in neighboring countries and some 1.5 million are internally displaced. 

Thousands continue to cross the border to North-Eastern Kenya into the largest refugee complex in the world, Dadaab. At their inception, Dadaab camps were intended to house 90,000 refugees; today that figure has surpassed the 522,000 mark, according to UNHCR.

In August 2011, Internews led a joint assessment of the communication and information needs of refugees in the Dadaab camps that found that serious communication gaps between the humanitarian sector and refugees are increasing refugee suffering and putting lives at risk. 

Results from the final report, Dadaab, Kenya - Humanitarian Communications and Information Needs Assessment Among Refugees in the Camps, show that large numbers of displaced Somalis did not have the information they required to access basic aid or voice their concerns or ask questions to aid providers or the government.

How to apply:

Please visit Internews' website to apply:

Closing Date: 8th June 2012

https://sj.tbe.taleo.net/SJ11/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=INTERNEWS&cws=1&rid=119 

or http://www.internews.org/jobs