These TORs relate to the Policy & Advocacy Manager on one component of the PHNP programme - Empowerment, Voice and Accountability for Better Health and Nutrition (EVA-BHN) granted to Futures 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. This includes:
- Influencing relevant legislation, policy, practices, and service delivery systems through greater pressure and demand from the citizens. The project will work through a combination of empowerment, voice and accountability approaches including, but not limited to, awareness raising and mobilization, advocacy and lobbying, capacity building, coalitions and partnerships.
- Pilot innovative solutions for increasing access of the poor and women and girls to RMNCH and nutrition – with priority to increasing immunisation coverage, skilled birth attendance, modern contraceptive usage, child and mother nutrition, management of common child ailments and usage of primary healthcare facilities, community workers, etc.
[Describe overview of job mission]
GENERAL POSITION SUMMARY:
Policy advocacy is a supportive function within EVA and cuts across all key components of EVA. The primary purpose of policy advocacy include triggering and pursuing citizen-centric health reforms in the province through citizen voices and their inclusion in decision making resulting into a more responsive health system. The policy advocacy team have a three-fold function, to support the success of EVA activities through facilitation with stakeholders, to do direct advocacy with decision makers using EVA produced evidence and to support and build the capacity of EVA civil society and government partners in advocacy and policy recommendation uptake respectively.
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 Policy Advocacy 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 policy and advocacy component of the proposed EVA-BHN project in KP.
The Policy and Advocacy 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 agenda. S/he will work with short-term technical experts for the design of specific policy and advocacy intervention packages in the project and identify opportunities for pushing through these interventions for scale up
The Policy & Advocacy Manager will be line-managed by the Provincial Manager, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and will be technically supervised by the Senior Media and Policy Advisor based in Islamabad. 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.
ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS:
Technical Support
- Be the focal person responsible for the provincial and district political economy analysis 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.
- Undertake the necessary tasks for rolling out of the Data Demand and Information Use (DDIU) trainings at provincial and district levels.
- Provide technical support and guidance on Health and Nutrition Policy and Advocacy for all project activities and strategies in KP.
- 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.
- Develop and keep updated the policy and advocacy strategy and implementation plan at provincial and district(s) levels.
- Provide technical oversight to the implementation of Local Political Economy Analysis in selected districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
- 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 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 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 Provincial Manager and Senior Policy and Media Advisor for updating the stakeholders’ mapping for EVA-BHN in the context of policy related environmental changes in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 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, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
- Develop provincial and district(s) advocacy activities plans in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and undertake those in consultation with the Provincial Manager and Senior Policy and Media Advisor.
- Support the Community Health 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 KP
Technical Mentoring and Capacity Building
- Provide technical support to the roll out of training packages for community groups, DAF, TAG and 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, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
- 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
- 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 KP
- 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 as a concept, its strategies, 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