Amalima Communications Officer

Introduction
This Scope of Work provides the details for the role of the Amalima Communications Officer based in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. The Communications Officer will work closely with the Amalima Chief of Party and programs team.

This position will play a vital role in capturing, documenting, and disseminating key results, stories, and lessons learned of the Amalima program over its final year of implementation.

General Program Description
The Amalima program is a $60 million USAID-funded Food for Peace program in Zimbabwe implemented by lead agency CNFA and partners ORAP, IMC, Dabane Water Workshops, Africare, and the Manoff Group. Amalima is a 7-year program, currently in its sixth year of implementation, which serves over 300,000 people in 4 districts in Matabeleland. The program’s goal is to sustainably improve household nutrition and food security through increased resilience and growth, via three strategic objectives:

– SO 1: Household Access to and Availability of Food Improved
– SO 2: Community Resilience to Shocks Improved
– SO 3: Nutrition and Health Among Pregnant and Lactating Women and Boys and Girls Under 2 Improved

General Responsibilities
Develop, support and promote program goals, including message development, social media content creation and media outreach; Develop and disseminate public relations materials that increase visibility among the public and stakeholders; Build and maintain relationships with journalists and public influencers who can help raise awareness of our work; Provide technical support in editing, design, lay-out and presentation of communications materials including reports, presentations, posters/banners and audio/video; Take photographs and record audio and video of program activities, support field staff in their ability to document activities (especially photography), lead collection and organization of photographs from field staff.

Play a key role in TAPAS, the program support team which:
Organizes events, including donor and GoZ stakeholder visits, media tours, participates in expos/conferences, stakeholder consultation meetings, Amalima internal reflection meetings, and drafts accompanying Press Releases as appropriate; Plans learning events and pulls together communication materials (photos, success stories, case studies, presentations) with programs staff; Coordinates communications opportunities and events as they occur on an ad-hoc basis; Manages the Amalima library of photographs and other communications items; Writes one-paragraph monthly program updates for updates to USAID and CNFA HQ; Collaborates with field teams to identify and develop success stories.

Communications Officer Required Skills and attributes
At least a Bachelor’s degree in Communications, Journalism, Public Relations or related field; A minimum of two years’ experience in communications strategy development, public relations, journalism, or marketing; Excellent written English (including editing) and verbal communication skills.
Ndebele language skills strongly preferred; Technical skills in photography and document/presentation design required, audio and/or video production and editing, graphic design skills strongly preferred; Knowledge of using social media in communication strategy; Excellent critical thinking skills and the ability to exercise good judgment and solve problems quickly and effectively; Energetic, motivated, positive attitude, self-starter.