Organization: UNV – United Nations Volunteers
Location: Isiolo | Mandera | Garissa | wajir
Grade: Volunteer – National Specialist – Locally recruited Volunteer
Occupational Groups:
Women’s Empowerment and Gender Mainstreaming
Children’s rights (health and protection)
Emergency Aid and Response
Protection Officer (Refugee)
Gender-based violence
Drugs, Anti-Money Laundering, Terrorism and Human Trafficking
Closing Date: 2025-01-16
Details
Mission and objectives
Context
Promoting the rights of every child, everywhere, is UNICEF’s primary goal, and it guides all of its initiatives, campaigns, and day-to-day activities.
Under Outcome 3, the UNICEF Kenya Country Office (KCO) 2022–2026 Country Program seeks to guarantee that:
More kids and teenagers, especially those living in underprivileged areas, will be safer and better protected from HIV, violence, exploitation, abuse, neglect, and harm by 2026, including during emergencies.
UNICEF, in particular, has pledged to strengthen government and non-governmental partners’ ability to implement risk-informed strategies for emergency planning, preparedness, and response to humanitarian requirements for child protection, including Gender-Based Violence (GBV).
The government is receiving technical assistance from UNICEF to improve its ability to protect children and address gender-based violence in catastrophic situations. This assistance includes planning for preparedness and response, mainstreaming disaster risk reduction, and fostering resilience in emergency response. Support for emergency preparedness and response capabilities at the national and local levels is crucial given the nation’s frequent calamities (drought and floods). UNICEF is also carrying out child protection initiatives in regions that are hosting refugees in an effort to strengthen the link between humanitarian aid, development, and peace. This also entails trying to make sure that UNICEF’s efforts to develop its child protection systems are influencing the refugee operation’s child protection initiatives.
To increase awareness and strengthen the capabilities of pertinent actors in these fields, UNICEF KCO collaborates closely with both governmental and non-governmental partners. In order to address the Triple Threat of adolescent vulnerability to HIV/AIDS, teenage pregnancies, and GBV, the child protection, health, and education sectors should strategically concentrate on the unique needs of adolescents in general and adolescent girls in particular.
Social and behavioral transformation tactics that use community mobilization and behavioral insights
methods are important change tactics used in the current national program. UNICEF works to mobilize SBC techniques at scale in a way that amplifies local voices and agency, uses local experience knowledge, better understands belief and value systems, and milestones behavior shifts.
All things considered, this role will help UNICEF fulfill its fundamental promises to children. The role will give the National UNV a rare chance to engage on longer-term child protection system strengthening while also gaining expertise in child protection and GBV.
Task description
This UNV will work on a broad spectrum of child protection and GBV issues such as those relating to preparedness and response, but the main focus of this position will be to support the Garissa office in its support the counties of Garissa, Isiolo, Mandera and Wajir by: (1) contributing to the strengthening/integration of gender-based violence and child protection in county level programming; and (2), support the UNICEF Garissa Zonal Office on child protection and GBV programming in the four counties, working closely with the Ministry of Health and local Civil Society Organizations.
The UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks:
Support programme planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and reporting
· Contribute to the planning of child protection programmes, including emergency programming
· Monitor programmess through field visits and exchange of information with partners to assess progress, identify bottlenecks, potential problems and child protection risks. Make recommendations accordingly to resolve issues and/or refer to relevant officials for timely resolution.
· Collaborate with inter-agency partners at county level and UNICEF Garissa zonal offices on planning, coordination and implementation of child protection activities. Ensure organizational priorities are fully considered and integrated in development planning and agenda setting.
· Monitor and verify the optimal and appropriate use of programme resources (financial, administrative and other assets) in compliance with organizational rules, regulations, procedures, donor commitments, as well as standards of accountability and integrity. Ensure timely reporting and liquidation of funds advanced to implementing partners.
· Support the implementation of the Child Protection Section annual workplan and the office Annual Management Plan. This will also entail promoting visibility and advocacy for the protection and well-being of children, including in humanitarian context.
· Contribute to integrating Child protection and GBV with other sectors such as Health, Nutrition, WASH, Education and Social Policy and protection including cross- cutting issues i.e. gender, social behaviour change, Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP), PSEA, advocacy as well as enhancing cross-sectoral coordination and collaboration
Provide technical and operational support for programme implementation
· Undertake field monitoring visits and collect and share reports with child protection staff in UNICEF Garissa Zonal Office and Nairobi.
· Report on critical issues, bottlenecks, and potential risks for timely action to achieve results.
· Provide technical support to government counterparts, NGO partners, on the application and understanding of UNICEF policies, strategies, processes and best practices in child protection, to support programme implementation.
· Support child protection program design, planning and implementation interventions with partners, Government counterparts and CP/Gender Technical working group members in line with the humanitarian response plan and UNICEF Kenya’s child protection programming priorities.
· Participate in Reproductive maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health ( RMNCAH) meetings and provide technical support GBV response activities implementation and ensure GBV are reflected within the cluster plans, including the strengthening of GBV services within health facilities, coordination activities and response, referrals.
· Contribute to the development, adaptation, review and rollout of training materials, guidelines, standard operating procedures, and other documents pertaining to child protection in the counties.
· Support capacity-building for child protection frontline workers related activities ,including case management of GBV
· Compile and submit monthly activity work plans, weekly and monthly reports.
Furthermore, UN Volunteers are required to:
· Strengthen their knowledge and understanding of the concept of volunteerism by reading relevant UNV and external publications and take active part in UNV activities (for instance in events that mark International Volunteer Day);
· Be acquainted with and build on traditional and/or local forms of volunteerism in the host country.
· Reflect on the type and quality of voluntary action that they are undertaking, including participation in ongoing reflection activities.
· Contribute articles/write-ups on field experiences and submit them for UNV publications/websites, newsletters, press releases, etc.;
· Assist with the UNV Buddy Programme for newly arrived UN Volunteers.
· Promote or advise local groups in the use of online volunteering or encourage relevant local individuals and organizations to use the UNV Online Volunteering service whenever technically possible.