Background:
A stable and prosperous Pakistan is a top priority in international development efforts of the UK Government. Empowerment and voice of women, girls and marginalized social groups is vital for these efforts to succeed. Therefore, enabling them to articulate their needs and influence legislation, policies and practices which affect them is at the heart of the UK’s development assistance. Better access to reproductive, maternal, new-born and child health and nutrition is an important entry point to achieve this objective.
Pakistan has missed the health Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). DFID Pakistan therefore is focussing on reproductive, maternal, new-born and child health (RMNCH) including nutrition to support effective implementation of health sector strategies that will lead to achievement of the health MDGs. DFID has recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Government of Pakistan supporting the Provincial Health and Nutrition Programme (PHNP) to achieve RMNCH and nutrition results in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces for the period of 2013 to 2017.
These TORs relate to the Advocacy and Accountability Manager on one component of the PHNP programme - Empowerment, Voice and Accountability for Better Health and Nutrition (EVA-BHN) granted to Palladium Group.
The objective of the EVA-BHN is to increase the demand for better RMNCH services and nutrition and empower citizens to raise their voices and hold the service providers to account. Women, girls and children with the greatest needs and from underserved backgrounds will be prioritized. Through its activities, EVA-BHN will complement the supply-side interventions by increasing demand and strengthening mechanisms for greater and effective citizen participation and monitoring of health services.
GENERAL POSITION SUMMARY:
Advocacy and accountability is a cross cutting function within EVA and will support all key components of the project. The primary purpose of this component includes triggering and pursuing citizen-centric health policy and practice changes in the province through citizen voices and their inclusion in decision making resulting into a more responsive health system. The Advocacy and Accountability team has a three-fold function, to contribute towards the success of EVA activities through facilitation with stakeholders, undertake direct advocacy with decision makers using EVA produced evidence and support and build the capacity of citizens.
This will be achieved through supporting, catalysing and actively pursuing the transformation of EVA produced and other related evidence into reforms at policy and implementation levels. The Advocacy and Accountability team will help EVA work streams through creating an enabling environment, building strategic partnerships, and building capacity of the stakeholders for actively identifying the entry points and pursuing of reforms to take place and to be rolled out. The main objective of this position will be to provide overall leadership and technical support for the advocacy and accountability component of the proposed EVA-BHN project in Punjab.
The Advocacy and Accountability Manger will effectively engage with relevant forums established at provincial and district level as well as the public and private-sector counterparts. S/he will work closely with different departments of government related to the project, civil society representatives, UN organizations and other relevant donor funded projects to identify and create opportunities for the EVA-BHN focused policy and advocacy agendas. S/he will work with short-term technical experts for the design of specific policy and advocacy interventions in the project and identify opportunities for pushing through these interventions for scale up. Given that district is the hub of the different activities in EVA, extensive field travel and stay in district will be required for the manager. S/he may have to work for extended periods of time from project’s Multan office as most of the target districts are clustered around Multan.
The incumbent of this position will be required to work in close collaboration with the other components leads i.e. community health, research monitoring and evaluation; and voice and accountability in updating the advocacy agenda/objectives/strategies, undertaking both formal and informal advocacy activities for pursuit of the agendas and implementation of the strategies. S/he will also closely work with the monitoring and evaluation teams for documentation of the changes/reforms resulting from EVA interventions and the processes that lead to those changes.
Reports to: Director Advocacy and Accountability
Location: Lahore with frequent travel to project districts in Punjab
ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS:
Technical
- Be the focal person responsible for the provincial and district political economy analysis (PEA) exercises to be undertaken at regular intervals at different levels (provincial and districts). S/he will receive and impart the training on PEA to the teams and oversee the documentation of the PEA without and within the Knowledge Management Component of the project.
- Manage the implementation of the District Advocacy Forums (DAFs) to meet the objectives desired of these forums. This will include and not limited to organizing DAF meetings, undertaking relevant documentation, reporting and dissemination, DAF members capacity building and follow up of the decisions taken during DAF meetings.
- Undertake and manage Advocacy and Accountability Capacity Building initiatives.
- Implement Health and Nutrition Policy and Advocacy activities and strategies in Punjab.
- Provide support to political engagement strategy roll out of EVA.
- Ensure that project activities are technically sound, evidence-based, and responsive to the needs of the province, its people especially women, children, poor and marginalized, and the donor
- Conduct policy environment analysis and regularly update it according to the Provincial and District(s) political and economic situation.
- Manage and implement the District Political Change Analysis in targeted districts of Punjab.
- Provide technical support for design of policy advocacy interventions such as in identification of key audience for policy communication, networks/coalitions establishment, strategies for engaging with policy elites and political parties by the networks.
- Identify and effectively engage with technical counterparts in the public, non-governmental and private sectors to create buy in for the policy interventions through lobbying, participating and pursuing.
- Identify the key forums in public and private sector at provincial and district(s) levels and regularly engage with them to generate and maintain an enabling environment for the project interventions scale up.
- Provide inputs, working closely with short term technical experts and consortium partners of EVA for conducting consultations in selected districts of Punjab as and when required.
- Identification of the advocacy opportunities in governance of the Province and district(s) to undertake lobbying for pushing pro-poor RMNCH and nutrition policy changes.
- Regularly share inputs with the Director Advocacy and Accountability for updating the stakeholders’ mapping for EVA-BHN in the context of policy related environmental changes in the Punjab and district(s) of intervention pertaining to and affecting EVA-BHN outcomes and outputs, share the advocacy opportunities, facilitate meetings as per requirements of Provincial Manager, Punjab.
- Develop provincial and district(s) advocacy activities plans in Punjab.
- Manage the DAF and PAF data bases
- Identify the content for newsletters and case studies.
- Organize exposure visits of Punjab stakeholders to KP and vice versa for learning purposes.
- Support the Community Empowerment Team and the V&A team with the success of their activities through facilitation with stakeholders
- Support the HANIF team through facilitation with stakeholders in Punjab
Technical Mentoring and Capacity Building
- Provide technical support for rolling out of training packages for community groups, PSC as and when required.
- Contribute to a team atmosphere conducive to professional growth and development of excellent personnel.
- Provide oversight to provincial and district(s) teams with respect to provincial and district levels policy and advocacy activities.
Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E)
- Provide feedback to development of project’s M&E system in close collaboration with the Research, Monitoring and Evaluation Advisor, Punjab.
- Support in documentation of and ensuring incorporation of lessons learned into ongoing programming of EVA-BHN from the policy and advocacy perspectives.
- Support development of M&E tools and indicators for policy and advocacy interventions.
Qualifications
Essential
- Relevant post-graduate degree
- A minimum of seven years’ experience in policy advocacy related programmes including 3 years of management in lead role of such projects/programmes
- Experience of working with the health sector in Pakistan and abroad
- Demonstrated understanding of rights based approaches
- Strong relationships at province level with decision makers around health in Punjab
- Demonstrated ability to support other teams
Competencies
- Ability to communicate effectively in English in both verbal and written formats for different types of correspondence as well as information dissemination.
- Demonstrated experience of successful advocacy initiatives
- Strong knowledge of the policy making institutions, processes, documents and key institutions/organizations related to health in specific and to grievance redress mechanism and accountability in provincial context.
- Strong understanding of advocacy and accountability as concept, the strategies and methods and measurement.
- Demonstrated ability of strategic thinking and improvising for achieving advocacy objectives.
- Good understanding of the ongoing reforms in the province especially related to health.
- Ability to liaise effectively with a range of stakeholders, including project partners, donors, private sector, NGOs, and government departments
- Strong results orientation and commitment to accountability and value for money
- Strong personal qualities, including integrity, commitment to excellence, equality, openness, inclusiveness, and collegiality