NGO JOBS

Organization: Action Against Hunger-USA
Country: Democratic Republic of the Congo
Closing date: 07 Feb 2014

DETAILS OF THE PROGRAM

Basic project information

Program Title: DRC WASH Consortium

Location: 11 Provinces of DRC (Bandundu and Kasai Occidental for ACF)

Project Starting Date: 01/07/2013

Project Ending Date: 06/30/2017

Background of the project

The DRC Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Promotion (WASH) Consortium comprises five experienced international NGOs who, by drawing on global experience of quality WASH programmes and experience of working in consortia, aim to increase the coverage of sustainable water and sanitation provision in the DRC.

The Consortium members are: Action Against Hunger (ACF), Agence d'aide à la Coopération Technique et au Développement (ACTED), Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Concern Worldwide and Solidarités International.

Vision

The vision of the DRC WASH Consortium is healthy, productive and self-reliant communities living in clean environments who, by participating in sustainable solutions to water, sanitation and hygiene services and leading this process, are catalysts for human development in DRC.

Mission

The mission of the DRC WASH Consortium is to assist rural communities in the DRC to achieve sustainable improvements in their lives thereby building resilience of communities faced with high morbidity and mortality due to problems linked to barriers of access to potable water, poor sanitation and improved hygiene.

OBJECTIVE OF THE CONSULTANCY

User of the research’s results

ACF

Country Director and Deputy Country Director for Programs
Wash Coordinator
Field Coordinator and Programme Managers in the fieldHQ

Desk Officer
Water, Sanitation & Hygiene technical advisor, NY
Other

CCU, Consortium members and all sector buy-in organisation

Context

ACF proposes to develop an innovative Communication and Community Mobilization strategy and tools through conducting an Initial Rapid Socio Cultural Assessment (RSCA) and the developing a Methodology of Behaviour Change Communication inspired by COMBI and/or Social Community Based Marketing as part of the information gathering for the development of and adapting community mobilization programming among DRC WaSH Consortium organizations.

Literature Review

Evidence for using marketing techniques, to improve behaviour-change outcomes in WASH programming, is discussed in a 2009 UNICEF WASH Literature Review. This interest in social marketing techniques is attributed to “failures of conventional education, top-down, and supply-driven hygiene and sanitation interventions to bring about large-scale behavioural change in the past 25 years”. There is a need to bridge the gap between communities and actors in designing programmes to effectively impact WASH related decision-making. This notion is furthered with the recent 2012 State of the Humanitarian System report, which lists relevance and appropriateness as one of five proposed areas of action. In this report, findings reveal a “need to deepen investments in contextual analysis and to engage aid recipients and local organizations more meaningfully in determining needs and programme design”.

ACF proposes to develop an innovative Behaviour Change Communication and Community Mobilization strategy and tools into the consortium’s common 12-step approach for 30 ACF target villages in Popokabaka Zone de Santé in Bandundu Province and produce a final report which will be shared with consortium members and all sector buy-in organisations.

This strategy shall be developed considering but not being limited to the following two methodologies.

Communication for Behavioural Impact (COMBI) and elements of social marketing have been pre-identified as interesting starting points which could be adapted to the WASH context.

COMBI is an integrated marketing and communication approach produced by the World Health Organization. The approach uses a variety of community-based formative research and social marketing analysis techniques for planning intervention programmes which are centred on communication strategies. It has been used primarily for outbreak responses, information campaigns and immunization initiatives.

Community-Based Social Marketing (CBSM)

Community-based social marketing is an attractive alternative that has been shown to be very effective at bringing about behaviour change. Its effectiveness is due to its pragmatic approach. This approach involves the following 5 steps.

Step 1: Selecting behaviours: whatever the purpose of campaign is there are nearly always a wide array of behaviours that may be promoted.

Step 2: Identifying Barriers and Benefits: if any form of sustainable behaviour is to be widely adopted, barriers that impede people from engaging in the activity must first be identified along with what would motivate them to act. The identified barriers may be internal to the individual, such as lack of knowledge regarding how to carry out an activity, or external, as in structural changes that need to be made in order for the behaviour to be more convenient or social and cultural norms.

Step 3: Developing strategies: A variety of “tools” that are effective in changing behaviour have been identified. These tools include approaches such as gaining a commitment from an individual that they will try a new activity, or developing community norms that encourage people to behave more sustainably. The techniques that are used by community-based social marketers are carried out at the community level and frequently involve direct personal contact. Personal contact is emphasized because social science research indicates that we are most likely to change our behaviour in response to direct appeals from others.

Step 4: Piloting: Prior to implementing a community-based social marketing strategy, it is piloted in a small portion of a community. Given the high cost of implementing many programs, it is essential to know that a strategy will work before it is implemented on a large scale. Conducting a pilot allows a program to be refined until it is effective. Conducting a pilot can be a crucial step in demonstrating to funders the worthiness of implementing a program on a broad scale.

Step 5: Broad-scale implementation and Evaluation: The final step of community-based social marketing involves on-going evaluation of a program once it has been implemented in a community.

With its emphasis on identifying and targeting barriers and benefits in relation to core behaviours, these types of approach, adapted to the consortium programme, would allow for the development and implementation of a cohesive WASH behaviour change communication strategy. The approach and resulting communication strategy can easily be integrated into the common 12-step approach of the Consortium which would impact all aspects of the programme from infrastructure provision and support to management committees to individual behaviour change and household health decision making. Furthermore, this approach opens up possibilities for new feedback and collaboration mechanisms valuable for continuous WASH programmes in rapidly changing contexts.

Rationale

Community mobilization and promoting behaviour change for WaSH, also known as the software component, includes activities such as hygiene promotion; community sensitization campaigns; WaSH committee trainings; and participatory household latrine initiatives. These activities typically do not receive a lot of focus during the programming phases resulting in a generalized approach to communities irrespective of the real diversities found within and among them.

With growing consensus of the importance of community mobilization and behaviour change promotion activities towards overall impact (including in terms of equal access to infrastructures) and sustainability of WaSH projects there is strong rationale for an RSCA. The RSCA will be used to facilitate the definition of a comprehensive Behaviour Change Communication and Community Mobilisation Strategy, specific to each of the consortium’s areas of operation, as a first step to WaSH programming.

This document is a brief Terms of Reference proposing a 6 month post to support the conduction of a RSCA and facilitate the definition of a Behaviour Change Communication and Community Mobilisation Strategy in consultation with the consortium.

The research will be done under the direction of a Steering Committee what terms of references are available upon request.

Aims of the Rapid Socio-Cultural Assessment & Behaviour Change Communication and Community Mobilization Strategy Definition

General objective: To collect and compile information about communities across the selected coverage area for the development of a comprehensive Behaviour Change Community Mobilization and Communication Strategy.

Specifics objectives

To do a review of all available methodologies/tools/documents in RDC and to meet key WaSH actors in order to analyse other approaches, share information and experiences. The researcher will participate, if possible, in the WaSH cluster meeting set by UNICEF on the first 2014 quarter to present its community communication and mobilization strategy.To conduct a rapid socio-cultural assessment (RSCA), including at least the following parameters:Identify main stakeholders in the community and their relationship within the socio-political, spiritual, religious, economic and WaSH sectors;Identify key persons within the community in terms of enabling change;Identify community organisation and groups and their dynamics (including a short analysis of vulnerable groups, exclusion, position of women in society/family, tensions, etc.);Identify formal and informal channels of communication;Identify water, hygiene and sanitation attitude;Identify water, hygiene and sanitation seeking behaviour related to sanitation, water handling and storage and hygiene;Identify success and “proud factors” identified by communities during the last decade (what success (es) the community is most proud of? Which factors led to this success? What positive projection can the community make for the next decade?);Identify barriers (including in terms of resources) that impede people from adopting appropriate behaviors related to sanitation, water handling and hygiene , including social and cultural norms and practices and the extent to which they’re entrenched;Identify key features of the community that directly or indirectly could affect the planning and implementation of WaSH programming;Look at social organisation;Identify social solidarity mechanisms.To identify contextual barriers to water, sanitation and hygiene access.To develop a strategy based on a RSCA findings report and facilitate programming and tools for trainings, implementation, evaluation and monitoring of the new approaches. The strategy shall take into consideration the vision and values of the wash consortium as a component. It shall include practical recommandations to other Consortium members on how to integrate this kind of approach into the Consortium 12-step approach for the remaining implementation period. It may also include recommandations necessitating a budget and/or a timeframe that are not planned in the current project.

To train staff and key stakeholders in order to test and adjust the methodology.

To report to the steering committee in order to initiate a reflexion on a change in depth on how to tackle the software component of wash projects.

Scope of Work

ACF proposes to adapt innovative tools such as COMBI or CBSM into the consortium’s common 12-step approach for 30 ACF target villages in Popokabaka Zone de Santé in Bandundu Province and produce a final report which will be shared with consortium members.

Adapting the proposed tools in the consortium approach will comprise of the following 6 key activities:

Collect and document brief summaries of folklore from songs, stories, beliefs, traditions and customs in targeted communities;Modify and adapt COMBI/CBSM planning tools[1] to WASH programmes and introduce other formative research and social marketing tools as appropriate;Develop and conduct training with mentorship on tools for relevant ACF field staff;Implement these planning tools across 30 villages and analyse the appropriation possibilities of micro level government actors (theoretically and practically);Elaborate on a community behaviour change communication and mobilisation strategy;Produce a final report (English and French) and present the findings of the study at Technical Working Group review meeting.The work should result in 3 main outputs:

Training of ACF field staff and Zone de Santé staff on formative research techniques;Development and implementation of an integrated behaviour change communication and community mobilisation strategy and tools (the tools tested and the related results should be included, as well as methodology and proposals for adapting the tools with a scaling-up objective);Final report on research project (English and French) with presentation workshop to be presented to the Consortium members during the technical review meeting.The report should answer the following questions:

What are the identified non-divisible, end-state behaviours of the communities in the target locations related to adoption and retention of safe water use, hygiene, and sanitation practices?Which of the main identified positive or negative behaviours are recommended to be targeted to promote behaviour change in communities according to the combined impact, probability, and penetration analysis?What are the associated barriers to and opportunities for adoption of positive hygiene and sanitation practices?Do people have access to sufficient resources to implement the sought behaviour? Do they have access to clean water?What are the preliminary outcomes of the approach in relation to the DRC WASH Consortium members use of IEC material and data collection M&E tools?What are the potential public private partnerships and income generating activities linked with this approach in the DRC?What are the main recommendations for replicating and scaling-up this approach in the DRC?In addition, the report should include the following:

A set of the research and marketing analysis tools developed for this research ranked according to their appropriateness to the context in the DRC;A draft community mobilization and behaviour change communication strategy considering all elements of the WASH project: adoption of safe water use, hygiene and sanitation practices.As talking about behaviours, beliefs and tradition can be sensitive, the researcher must take ethic issues into consideration.

DURATION OF THE CONSULTANCY

This will be a 6 months research with about 4 month field research.

RESPONSIBILITIES AND DELIVERABLES

The research will be realised under the direction of a steering committee composed of several wash sector buy-in actors, especially the consortium’s members.It is envisaged this research will be carried out by the same ACF field team structure defined for the DRC WASH Consortium Programme. It will be necessary, however, to introduce the methodologies, facilitate tool adaptation and development, and build capacity on the team. It is expected that WASH actors will be consulted.The researcher will present the strategy as tested in Popokabaka to the Steering Committee, with recommendations for how to adapt the strategy into the Consortium approach based on the results of the pilot in Popakabaka. The reviewed and finalised strategy will be proposed to the Consortium members.The researcher will also be responsible to produce the final report on the research and present this prior to finalisation to ACF. ACF will provide Consortium members with the opportunity to comment on the report prior to finalisation and presentation at the Technical Working Group 6-monthly Review meeting to be held in Kinshasa in June of July 2014.The final report must include an executive summary of key recommendations and photos.The research will be used as the basis for refinement of the community mobilisation, hygiene promotion and behaviour change processes used by consortium members. This refinement will be led by the Consortium WASH M&E Coordinator.

LINES OF COMMUNICATION

The successful candidate will report to the WASH Coordinator and liaise with the Program Manager of ACF. She or he will be based in the Popokabaka with frequent travel to target villages. ACF will communicate with the steering committee and the WASH M&E Coordinator through the ACF WASH Coordinator.

SPECIFICATION OF SUCCESSFUL CANDIDATE

Master degree in anthropology / socio-anthropology or equivalent specialised profile with an emphasis in Community Mobilization and Communication strategy;Experience of community level social research;Experience leading and mentoring a team;Experience developing and facilitating trainings;Knowledge of community based social marketing;Knowledge and understanding of the WASH sector;Fluent French and a good working knowledge of English;Report writing skills;Familiar with field work and travel in difficult environments;Experience in DRC is a plus.

How to apply:

Please submit an updated curriculum vitae (containing two references) and a cover letter through our website at:

http://www.actionagainsthunger.org/about/employment/job-opportunities