Field Officer

Background/IRC Summary:

 The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC offers lifesaving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from war or disaster. At work today in over 40 countries and 22 U.S. cities, we restore safety, dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted and struggling to endure. The IRC leads the way from harm to home.

IRC has been working in Pakistan since 1980, and manages and delivers large, complex programs to meet the needs in health, education, protection, environmental health, and livelihoods for displaced, poor and disaster affected communities. IRC works in partnership with local government and non-governmental organizations and currently working in Pakistan.

IRC Pakistan will be implementing a one year “Access to Water and Sanitation project in Pakistan supported by Charity:Water. With an overall goal of gender equitable and socially inclusive WASH services. The project aims to improve the water and sanitation access of more than 100,000 clients in Peshawar, Swat and Buner districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. The project will focus on community, school and health centers access to water and sanitation services. A process of participatory training and discussion will be utilized to strengthen the WASH services in target communities.

Job Overview/Summary: The Field Officer will be responsible for the organization and managing ECHO water, sanitation, and hygiene activities, ensuring that activities are relevant, successfully implemented.

Major Responsibilities:

• Create linkages between the communities and the project, the local government and the relevant departments in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, promotion.
• Mobilize community groups, sensitize and train them on specific topics as required, organize and facilitate meetings.
• To provide continuous promotion of hygiene and sanitation standards through campaigns, meetings and community mobilization.
• Ensure maintained hygiene and sanitation standards among the community with support of IRC team.
• Daily coordination with communities and WASH team to complete project milestones.
• Plan and manage WASH project activities in a phased and prioritized manner with full consultation and coordination with technical staff.
• Assist in ensuring daily reporting of problems regarding WASH facilities to the Senior WASH Officer, in order to flag issues as soon as they arise. As much as possible, potential solutions should also be presented when reporting problems.
• Support achievement of sustainable WASH outcomes for women, the poor, transgender and persons living with disabilities (PLWDs).
• In collaboration with the MEL unit organize assessments, design surveys and monitoring mechanism for project sustainability.
• Strengthen capacity of relevant communities to support and sustain WASH services.
• Develop work-plans for the sector and monitor compliance to ensure objectives and targets are met and achieved.

Key Working Relationships:

Position Reports to: Sr. WASH Officer Position directly supervises: None

Job Requirements:

Education:

Minimum Bachelor’s degree (Honors), Social/Environmental/life Science or any other relevant field.

Work Experience:

Minimum 3 years’ experience in WASH projects, preferably in NGO environment. Experience can be in lieu of higher education.

Demonstrated Skills and Competencies:

• Profound cultural awareness and knowledge of WASH issues
• Ability to exercise sound judgment and make decisions independently
• Ability to work effectively with field staff demonstrating integrity and respect
• Extremely flexible, and can cope with stressful situations
• Creativity and the ability to work with limited resources
• Highly effective verbal communications skills
• Strong planning, organizational, interpersonal, and communication skills

Language Skills: English, Urdu, and Pashto, also knowledge of local languages would be an asset

Others:

The IRC Core Values and Commitments;

The IRC and IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in IRC Way - Standards for Professional Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, and Accountability. In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Beneficiary Protection from Exploitation and Abuse, Child Safeguarding, Anti Workplace Harassment, Fiscal Integrity Anti-Retaliation and Combating Trafficking in Persons.

IRC is committed to ensuring that IRC staff is suitable to work with children and have the knowledge s/he needs to uphold and abide by the IRC’s Child Safeguarding Policy.

Level of interaction with children: No direct contact with children

IRC ensures that its staff must actively practice the roles and responsibilities related to client responsiveness, accountability to people in affected communities and must have competencies to solicits and listens to feedback and other’s perspectives, responds to feedback with maturity and sensitivity and takes appropriate decisions and makes changes to behavior or actions in response to feedback.

IRC recognizes that gender equality is fundamental to the achievement of our organizational mission. As such, IRC is committed to the promotion of gender equality in all aspects of our operations and programs. Our organizational policies, procedures and actions demonstrate this commitment.

Women candidates and differently abled persons are highly encouraged to apply