Re-advertisement: Communication Specialist (Media), NO-3, Fixed Term Appointment, Warsaw, Poland #120021 (Open for Polish nationals only)

Contract

This is a NO-3 contract. This kind of contract is known as National Professional Officers. It is normally only for nationals. It's a staff contract. More about NO-3 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, advocacy

The Level 3 Scale-up for Ukraine was activated effective 5 March 2022, for an initial period of six months. With the activation of the procedure, UNICEF has adopted a no-regrets approach in view of the complex situation and increasing humanitarian needs, to ensure that UNICEF continues to provide life-saving response for the children and women in Ukraine in line with the CCCs. The recent escalation in the armed conflict in Ukraine poses an immediate threat to the lives and wellbeing of the country’s 7.5 million children. The intensification of the armed conflict is posing severe human costs, causing a growing number of civilian and children casualties, interrupting livelihoods and damaging critical civilian infrastructure, including hundreds of homes, water and sanitation infrastructure, schools and health facilities. Hundreds of thousands of children and their families have been internally displaced and, to-date, over one million forced to flee the country in search of safety – the majority are women and children.

In response, UNICEF has already mobilized organization-wide support. However, the deteriorating situation and complex operating environment requires strengthened capacity and sustained efforts to further expand our presence and work in those parts of the country that can be safely accessed, to strengthen our cluster and overall humanitarian leadership, and to continue scaling-up our humanitarian action, with priority focus on child protection, health, WASH, nutrition, learning, cash interventions and social protection efforts. UNICEF is also coordinating with refugee hosting countries to prepare and respond to the humanitarian needs emerging from population movements.

The national systems in Poland, as well as local organisations and volunteers, have responded quickly to accommodate the huge volume of new needs. UNICEF has moved rapidly to establish a Refugee Response Office in Poland and respond to the crisis both in terms of its own programming and through interagency contributions, including as a co-lead of the child protection and education sectors of the response.

Refugee Response Office n Poland is currently involved in the response by supporting the national government and local partners in delivering essential psychosocial support, education, health and protection services.

How can you make a difference?

The Specialist is accountable for developing, managing, co-ordinating, implementing and monitoring a media engagement and content strategy and associated products and activities with the objective of promoting awareness, understanding, support and respect for children’s and women’s rights, and support for UNICEF's mission, priorities and programmes in Poland.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES and DUTIES & TASKS

Media relations:

Ensure that the Country Office has a well maintained and continually developed contact list of journalists and media outlets covering all media – print, TV, radio, web etc. – and a successful process of communicating and maintaining regular contact and close collaboration with the media to communicate the story of UNICEF's cooperation to a wider audience.

• Promote a better understanding of, respect and support for children's and women's rights and issues by carrying out media, information and education activities in support of UNICEF-assisted development programmes or humanitarian efforts in the country.
• Develop, maintain and update media relations contact list/database.
• Establish, document, review and refine process of communicating with media contacts, including press conferences and events, issuing of media materials etc.
• Ensure rapid and accurate information dissemination to the media, National Committees, NGOs, the field and other appropriate audiences.
• Identify, develop, distribute and evaluate variety of media materials in multiple, appropriate formats. Ensure or enhance the quality, appropriateness of country specific communication materials, activities, processes and messages transmitted to the press, partners and public.
• Collaborate with mass media through activities such as organizing project site visits, press tours, facilitating photo coverage and TV footage and utilizing both web-based and traditional media as appropriate.
• Monitor and evaluate the use and effectiveness of media materials and share results and findings.
• Maintain close collaboration with Regional Communication Advisers and HQ Communication Officers for effective overall coordination.

Networking and partnerships:

Ensure that the Country Office has a well maintained and continually developed contact list of individuals, groups, organizations and fora (including Government, UN, and bilateral counterparts), whose support is essential to/can assist in achieving the advocacy and communication objectives of the communication strategy.

• Develop, maintain and update partners contact list/database.
• Help establish, document, review and refine process of working collaboratively with partners, including meetings, joint projects, information sharing etc.
• Ensure or enhance the quality, consistency and appropriateness of country-specific communication materials, activities, processes and messages shared with partners.
• Identify opportunities to strengthen the capacity of partners through appropriate advocacy and communication training, access to information, supplies and equipment and through knowledge sharing.
• Monitor, evaluate and share results and findings with partners.

Content creation:

Create and maintain and content strategy, ensure relevant external content adheres to UNICEF principles and guidelines

• Gather content and coverage of relevant country efforts to identify effective relevant country programme activities and results.
• Write, edit and finalize crisp, concise text for pitches, press releases and other media materials.
• Work in close coordination with multimedia production teams to capture relevant, powerful images for video stories and photo essays and oversee the qualitative aspects of production, (e.g., quality control, translations, reviews of layout and graphic design etc.) to meet standards as set out in the Communication Toolkit.
• Review, organize, edit, and consolidate material for knowledge products, ensuring clarity and continuity of the argument and clarity of structure and core themes.
• Proofread layout files, including checking spelling, country, and city names and acronyms and other abbreviations (making sure that they follow official UNICEF terminology and conventions), style consistency, callouts, layout problems, references, etc and ensure adherence to the UNICEF style guide.
• Establish or maintain an up-to-date documentation centre for communication materials including publications, press releases and clippings, photographs, audio-visual materials, web resources etc.

Celebrities and special events:

Ensure that the Country Office has a well maintained and continually developed contact list of appropriate, nationally-known personalities who have been identified, engaged and support UNICEF’s effort and who actively participate in special events and activities that support country programme goals.

• Develop, maintain and update local celebrities and influencers contact list/database.
• Help establish, document, review and refine process of working with local celebrities, including special events, media opportunities, field trips etc.

Global priorities and campaigns:

In addition to local/national campaigns, ensure that the Country Office has an effective process in place for integrating and taking action on UNICEF’s global communications priorities and campaigns, both disseminating these elements in a locally-appropriate way, as well as providing/enabling coverage of the work in the country for global use.

• Support the UNICEF global communications objectives and strategies through development of complementary country specific and local community materials and activities. Work plan should anticipate the inclusion of work on global priorities and campaigns.
• Develop and deploy country office communication capacity to gather/facilitate the content and coverage of relevant country efforts. Use the opportunity to identify/highlight effective programme activities and results.
• Ensure regular communication and co-ordination with relevant communication focal points in regional offices and headquarters divisions.

Donor reporting and recognition support:

Ensure that global and regional donor relations activities are supported by effective visibility, advocacy and communication locally.

• Mobilize country office communication capacity to support/facilitate the gathering of content and coverage of relevant country efforts for different donor reports/as per donor visibility requirements.
• Identify/highlight effective programme activities and results in support of donor relations.

Monitoring and evaluation:

Ensure that communication baselines are established against which the achievement of objectives of the communication strategy are regularly evaluated; analysis is undertaken to continuously improve the effectiveness of communication strategy, approach and activities; results and reports are prepared and shared on a timely basis.

• Provide technical support to ensure that a set of communication performance indicators is identified and adjusted as necessary, and these communication indicators are incorporated or fed forwarded in the Annual Management Plan, Annual Work Plan, etc.
• Conduct timely and accurate monitoring and evaluation activities to ensure the communications objectives are met and the strategy is effective.
• Undertake lessons learned review of successful and unsuccessful communication experiences and share observations/findings with country, regional and HQ communication colleagues so that best practices benefit UNICEF’s communication work.

Capacity building and support:

Ensure that the Representative/Senior or Regional Communication Officer and the country programme team are provided with professional expertise and advice on all aspects of external relations communication as required; opportunities are identified and addressed for building communication capacity among country communication team, media and other relevant partners.

• Advise UNICEF management, colleagues and staff on media strategy and implications for action and policies proposed.
• Support communication activities through knowledge management, information exchange and building capacity of the country communications team. Enable appropriate advocacy and communication training, access to information, supplies and equipment, and developing training and orientation material.
• Assist the Programme Communication Officer in the development of communication tools and/or strategies.
• Identify opportunities to strengthen the capacity of partners through appropriate advocacy and communication training.

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

• Advanced university degree in Communication, Journalism, Public Relations.

  (*A first University combined with 2 additional years of professional experience may be accepted in lieu of an Advanced University Degree in the field of journalism, communications, external relations, public affairs, public relations or corporate communications.)

• Five years of progressively responsible and relevant professional work experience in communication, print, broadcast, and/or new media.
• Field work experience. Background/familiarity with Emergency situations.
• Fluency in English and Polish is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or Ukrainian is an asset.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

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

• Demonstrates Self Awareness and Ethical Awareness (1)
• Works Collaboratively with others (1)
• Builds and Maintains Partnerships (1)
• Innovates and Embraces Change (1)
• Thinks and Acts Strategically (1)
• Drive to achieve impactful results (1)
• Manages ambiguity and complexity (1)

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.

We offer a wide range of benefits to our staff, including paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. UNICEF strongly encourages the use of flexible working arrangements.

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.

UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance. Issuance of a visa by the host country of the duty station, which will be facilitated by UNICEF, is required for IP positions. Appointments may also be subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid). Government employees that are considered for employment with UNICEF are normally required to resign from their government before taking up an assignment with UNICEF. UNICEF reserves the right to withdraw an offer of appointment, without compensation, if a visa or medical clearance is not obtained, or necessary inoculation requirements are not met, within a reasonable period for any reason.