International Consultant - Expert in WASH monitoring systems (10 months)

Contract

This is a Consultancy contract. More about Consultancy contracts.

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, a champion

Madagascar features among the countries with the worst water indicators in the world. The 2018 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) shows that only 41 per cent of the population has access to basic water.

The country is also extremely vulnerable to climate change. The average temperature is rising, the drought period has been extended, and intensive cyclones have swept across the country. Climate change has a tremendous negative impact on WASH services and water is the primary medium through which the effects of climate change are felt. The high pressure on the groundwater with both sinking water levels and increasing salinization is aggravating the living conditions of local communities.

The disparities between urban and rural areas are substantial: 69% of people living in urban areas have access to basic water, while in rural areas, the percentage drops to 32 per cent. A large but unknown portion of drilled boreholes are non fucntional, partly due to poor governance but also due to sinking ground water levels.

UNICEF is supporting the Madagsacar government to respond to the WASH deficits in the country. With an ambitious and multi-facetted program UNICEF is supporting women and children in need through regular and emeregency programs. Following climate change those lines are more and more blurred, stress is longstanding. Therefore UNICEF is investing in nexus programming. The holisitic approach of ensuring that programs are climate resilient expresses new needs for programme monitoring to manage the complex web of information needed to guide decisions.

To improve Government’s water management capacity, UNICEF Madagascar is helping technical ministries to monitor and map groundwater levels and other hydrogeological data for a better view of groundwater trends. UNICEF is also creating a groundwater database that can be used to improve the development and exploitation strategy for the water supply and other water uses of the population.

Unicef is undertaking an extensive program of waterpoint upgrading in three southern regions and will as part of this progrma make a complete waterpoint inventory in these regions and testpump 1,100 exsiting boreholes. The data gathered will strengthen considerably the monitoring system of the governmnt for access to water and hydrogelogical properties.

UNICEF is also leading the M&E component of a large multi-year joint programme with WFP that suports inter-sectorals nutrition, WASH, Food security and social protection interventions in in Southern Madagascar districts and communes. The need for developping front-end monitoring solutions to capture data flows and visualise activities coverage of this joint programme is of paramount importance.

In summary, Madagascar CO has a wide portfolio of activities in the WASH domain and is currently upgrading the internal processes and monitoring systems to track usage and performance of interventions, both hard and soft. The consultancy will assist UNICEF to design and operationalise internal systems to track projects and indicators, colect and visualize the access to water in the three regions in the south and upgrade the existing monitoring system for imporved functionality and decision making.

How can you make a difference?

[As the Consultant under the WASH Chief supervision, the main responsibility of the consultant is to contribute to the definition and design of UNICEF Madagascar's monitoring capacities using the mWater platform. This includes tracking and visualizing key indicators of the WASH - Nutrition programme and multi-sectorals intervention . Moreover, the consultant will implement training programs for national and sub-national data collection, monitoring, evaluation, and research capacity building, ensuring the participation of primary stakeholders. The consultant will also have the dedicated technical support form mWater on all that is backend, i.e development of indicators and best practice of indicator use.

Please find below the detailed terms of reference

mE wash _final _ VA.pdf

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• Advanced University degree in engineering, database management, m&e, GIS or other relevant disciplines
• Knowledge and proven experience with qualitative and quantitative information management, data collection methods, analysis. design and management of data/information system;
• Experienced in GIS software and mapping for groundwater resources;
• minimum of 5 years of professional experience in the field of WASH in UN Agency and/or national government with field-work experience.
• Demonstrated communication, training and supervisory skills;
• Previous, documented experience with mWater software compulsory
• Good working knowledge of french and english compulsory

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS).

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks:

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.