Advocacy & Communication Officer

Starting Salary: $33,795 

Contract: 1-Year Contract (renewable)  

Location: Kinshasa, DRC 

**Please note that we will only accept applications completed in English**

Job Profile  

The Advocacy & Communication Officer will manage CAFOD’s SIDA funded project entitled: “Tu Faulu Pamoja - Succeeding Together. The project will ensure women and you youth are represented in the decision-making instances by amplifying their voices through movement and associations capacity strengthening, small grant dispersing, and close follow up to enable for community tailored activities. The Communication and advocacy officer will require significant experience and skills to develop strategic advocacy plans that enable partners to overcome barriers and influence effective legal framework and policy process. Your communication skills and ability to work with others will build strong relationships that enable a coherent voice to shape this debate.  

The ideal profile will have strong interpersonal skills, leadership capacity to drive change while working with local partners. The successful candidate will have experience of working with a wide range of stakeholders at grass roots and senior level and ensuring that processes and outcomes are documented at all levels of the project cycle to donor standards. The Advocacy & Communication Officer will report to the Deputy Country Representative (with dotted strategic reporting to the Country Representative) and will be responsible to lead on overall PR and communication of the project.  

The post holder will be expected to undertake frequent travel to the project implementation areas. The post will be based in Kinshasa with frequent travels in Goma and in other implementation provinces.    

The scope of the post falls into the following functions: 

• Civil society participation in advocacy processes 

• Managing women’s empowerment projects 

• Strong knowledge of gender issues and social inclusion of youth 

• Economic empowerment  

• Strong skill to communicate transformative change 

You understand the value of bringing a Catholic voice to strengthen the call for justice, solidarity and sustainability. With valuable experience in working with a range of cultures and in different contexts, you have a range of tactics to challenge the power dynamics that exclude people from decision-making. You are committed to ensuring that those at the highest level take the perspectives of those living in poverty seriously.   

Key Responsibilities 

Advocacy, Representation and Communication  

• Act as a key focal point for CAFOD TFP project, and, under guidance of the Deputy Country Representative, be a focal point with key stakeholders and project partners in DRC regarding project related advocacy and communication issues.  

• Represent CAFOD at clusters, interagency, government and other platforms for the purposes of coordination of advocacy, response and sectoral policy development in collaboration with relevant advocacy team from CAFOD. 

• Collaborate with HQs Advocacy departments and focal persons where needed and ensure that TFP related advocacy content is coherent, up to dated and effective, and informed by our experience and that of our partners. 

• Develop and support partners to update their advocacy strategy and develop relevant advocacy positions, policy recommendations reflecting project contents and partner voices. 

• Promote CAFOD and Project profile internally and externally in media and communications, collaborate with stake holders – those of internal and external communications team in supporting the timely writing and gathering of stories and images and oversight of the country level communications plan. 

• Send out regular updates and reports to CAFOD Head Offices, and any other reporting or communications required including Sitreps.  

• Identify advocacy issues, preparing and implementing advocacy plans, documentation and communicating lessons and good practices from implementing programs to various users. 

• Support partners to develop and deliver their own advocacy message, represent TFP in specific fora and advocacy networks and within the broader community including strategic cluster meetings, 

• In coordination with the management, identify opportunities to influence system wide Governance policy issues in support of more effective project engagement on country’s global policy frameworks. 

• Provide the country management team with governance and PB trends, identifying areas of potential interest for strategic engagement, advocacy, and partnership-building 

• Organise / guide country office in the organisation of briefings on specific products/information to donor and relevant coordination mechanisms. 

Overseeing effective relationships with stakeholders:  

• Provide guidance and support to partner staff, the project accompanier and other members of the Project team in their work, to develop and nurture effective relationships with partners. In some cases (e.g. strategic partners), the post-holder can take a more active role in developing those relationships;  

• Work with Programme Officers and the team to support or facilitate the development of partners’ capacities on advocacy work and to promote transformative change in their work. This includes the development of tailor-made advocacy capacity development plans; 

• Ensure that the country partnership portfolio is regularly reviewed and that individual relationships are monitored against CAFOD’s and partners’ partnership standards and expectations. 

• Serve has focal point person for youth and women’s empowerment and gender equality programs and provide technical and programmatic support to the management and field staff as well as report to donors.  

• Building self-esteem within project participants and capacity through mentoring support  

• Work with other projects and stakeholders to help women and youth movements access credit and economic literacy and promote 

• Interact with politicians, decision makers and community leaders with a view to improving status of youth and women and the shifting of gender norms. 

• Help elected women parliamentarians and former and aspiring women politicians equipped with coalition and consensus building skills and advocacy on variety of issues, including women specific issues. 

• Trainers/facilitators from youth and women’s organizations to become agents of reform and change and provide effective political leadership training at provincial and local levels  

• Ensure that communities are awareness and perception of the role of women politicians as effective decisionmakers in government is improved.  

Financial and funding management: 

• Manage the project costs budget and cash flow (implementing manager/budget holder responsibilities), monitoring income and expenditure, and ensuring that the latter is done in compliance with agreed parameters and policy. 

• Develop the grant disbursement plan and ensure that financial reports are on time and accurate 

• Drawing from the objectives and agreed upon key activities in the project proposal, develop detailed implementation plan and budget forecasts and reports. 

• Plan training of grantees on financial aspects and ensure compliance with donor requirements.  

• Ensure accurate and timely financial reporting on programme work. 

• Ensure the programme complies with CAFOD’s financial management standards, including managing financial risks. 

Internal and external representation: 

• In co-ordination with the Deputy Country Representative and the Project team develop, nurture and sustain relationships and effective communications with relevant stakeholders, including local government, national networks and other agencies working in DRC.  This will include other Caritas/CIDSE agencies. 

• Provide necessary information the CR to enable him to sustain relationships with relevant bilateral agencies working in the project implementation area, including DfID and the EC, seeking opportunities for programme funding, where applicable. 

• Effectively communicate with other teams within CAFOD to ensure that the programmes are well understood, and that information is available for fundraising and other communications, including publications, media briefings, development education, etc. This may involve participating in communities of practice, working groups, supporter events, etc, as agreed with the Country Representative. 

• Participate in the cluster and or other inter-agency meetings in the implementation area. 

Systems and compliance:  

• Overseeing the effective use of CAFOD’s systems to share programme knowledge and inform decision making. This includes overseeing compliance with agreements, regulations and requirements attached to our work.  

Safeguarding  

All CAFOD staff share responsibility to promote and maintain a strong safeguarding culture, including identifying the key actions they should take given their role and responsibilities. Your role is responsible for ensuring that the programming work you are accountable for is safe, accessible, dignified and inclusive, providing ongoing support and follow-up to our partners in this area. 

Person Specification 

Understanding our context  

A Understanding Catholic identity.  

B Understanding CAFOD.  

C Understanding international development: Understanding and experience of international development and programme management and quality standards. 

Working together  

D Managing ourselves. 

E Working with others.  

F Communicating.   

G Looking outwards; Understanding and first-hand experience of effective and values-based partnership work between northern and southern organisations and communities. 

Making change happen  

H Managing resources; Makes effective use of ICT, particularly for distance communication. 

I Achieving results.   

J Managing our performance; Able to manage competing work demands; Able to manage a team of staff including staff at a distance. 

K Taking the lead; Sets an example of what can be achieved. 

Job-specific competencies 

1. Understanding and first-hand experience of institutional funding work/projects, priorities, trends and donor conditions.  
2. Experience using programme cycle management tools effectively to deliver work within an agreed programme framework, including programme integration.  
3. Able and committed to facilitate or support the development of partners’ capacities. 
4. Financial management understanding and experience. 
5. Ability and willingness to travel for approximately 12 weeks per year), sometimes at short notice and to areas of potential risk 
6. Languages (French and local languages are essential); 
7. Thematic experience in: 
8. Gender programming (DRC experience preferable) 
9. Protection mainstreaming 
10. Cash distribution and/or microfinance 
11. Smallholder market-oriented agriculture (nice to have). 

Desirable Criteria 

• Previous work experience in the country/sub-region
• Understanding of key country/sub-regional humanitarian trends and/or previous experience on humanitarian work. 

Safeguarding for Children and Vulnerable Adults  

CAFOD recognises the personal dignity and rights of children and vulnerable adults, towards whom it has a special responsibility and a duty of care and respect.  CAFOD, and all its staff and volunteers, undertake to do all in our power to create a safe environment for children, young people and vulnerable adults and to prevent their physical, sexual or emotional abuse.  CAFOD is committed to acting at all times in the best interests of children and vulnerable adults, seeing these interests as paramount.  Any candidate offered a job with CAFOD will be expected to adhere to CAFOD’s Safeguarding policy and sign CAFOD’s Code of Behaviour as an appendix to their contract of employment and agree to conduct themselves in accordance with the provisions of these documents.  

All offers of employment will be subject to satisfactory references, and appropriate screening checks can include criminal records and terrorism finance checks. CAFOD also participates in the Inter Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. In line with this Scheme, we will request information from job applicants’ previous employers about any findings of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and/or sexual harassment during employment, or incidents under investigation when the applicant left employment. By submitting an application, the job applicant confirms their understanding of, and consent to, these recruitment procedures.