Requisition ID: req19152

Job Title: Information Assistants

Sector: Protection and rule of law

Employment Category: Regular

Employment Type: Full-Time

Open to Expatriates: No

Location: Kasulu, Tanzania

Job Description

Background/IRC summary

The International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) mission is to help the world’s most vulnerable people survive, recover, and gain control of their future. The IRC has been working in Tanzania since 1993, promoting access to quality education, health, and protection. We deliver life changing programmes through a team of over 200 staff and 2,000 volunteers. Our work includes the management of forty schools, health facilities and protection centers. IRC and partners strive to ensure thousands of children and young people can access quality education and receive vocational training. We work to improve mental health through a network of mental health centers and work with adolescent girls, people with disabilities, to protect and empower them and help build safer, more cohesive communities.

Responsive Information services

Responsive information services are an innovative service provision initiative providing the humanitarian community with a platform to reach refugees, asylum seekers and crisis-affected communities around the world with accessible information. This programming will take a holistic approach to address information needs in Nyarugusu and Nduta refugee camps, by both providing information to refugees in the camps through medium they chose, and collecting data on the types of information that refugees want and need to receive, so we can constantly adapt our content to the needs expressed. It is a useful information resource for people in need fosters more in-depth community, more trust, and, most importantly, more utility for its users. IRC will use information hubs located within communities to communicate directly with refugees and asylum-seekers listen to their questions and provide information, through frontline staff using a digital platform that provides updated articles and service maps as a basis of information.

Job Overview:

IRC is seeking two Information Assistants to be based in information hubs located within the communities, the direct supervision of an Editorial Senior Officer. The Information Assistants will be responsible for communicating directly with clients daily, replying to comments, messages, and questions. 

Major Responsibilities:

Frontline staff or information assistants are the beating heart of responsive information services. They communicate directly with the refugees every day – providing general information and replying to their individual questions.

• Reply to questions and comments received by the refugees at the information hubs in line with moderation guidelines.
• Follow protocol to escalate any communication from vulnerable cases to Protection staff.  
• Provide Feedback on (and translate into English if required) representative and noteworthy questions and feedback and write an analysis of the day’s communications (including responses to individual questions, trends in conversation and information gaps).
• Share opinions, feedback, cultural awareness, contextual knowledge, and learning with the wider team on an ongoing basis.
• Collaborate with Editorial Senior officer, ACEO and protection teams to develop thorough, well-researched answers.  
• Analyze information gaps amongst refugee populations to feed into future content creation.
• Keep up to date with all the new information that we put out on an ongoing basis and attend regular trainings as required.
• Any other duties as assigned by the supervisor.

Key Working Relationships:

Position Reports to: Editorial Senior Officer

Position directly supervises:  N/A

Indirect Reporting: Advocacy Community Engagement and Outreach Manager    
Other Internal and/or external contacts: N/A

Qualifications

Work Experience:

 2-3 years of experience working with refugees, asylum seekers, displaced persons, refugee hosting communities in protection or a related field.

 Demonstrated Skills and Competencies:

• Ability to deliver information and collect feedback from communities on information needs.
•  Ability to draft weekly reports and other project progress reports of high quality.
• Ability to conduct information needs gap assessments in various sectors to inform appropriate intervention and response to people’s queries.
• An understanding of the power and importance of accurate information and the ability to exercise strong judgement in ensuring all answers are accurate.
• Effective coordination and collaboration with IRC internal sectors and other partners
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills as well as, an overall ability to be clear and concise in all communications.
• Experience in Communicating with Communities (CwC) is a plus.
• Ability to use tablets and databases
• Ability to act with discretion, integrity, and diplomacy.

Language Skills:

•  Advanced Kirundi, French and English language skills, oral and written.

 Preferred experience & skills:

• Great attention to detail
• Strong organizational and time-management skills; proven ability to prioritize and deliver on time.
• Strong analytic problem-solving skills
• Ability to work both independently and in a dynamic, cross-functional team.
• Proficient in Microsoft Office suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc.)
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively with stakeholders at all levels.

Working Environment:

•  Information Assistants will work at the information hubs in the camps, as well as at IRC office