Emergency Coordinator

Location: Zimbabwe - Harare

Background

Zimbabwe is currently experiencing its second cholera outbreak since August 2008. The first outbreak involved 2000 cases in August and was handled by the MOH Zimbabwe.

In October and November of this year, the country plunged into its second outbreak.

To date, there have been 16,403 cases and 783 deaths. According to the WHO epidemiologists, the explosive 4 weeks pattern experienced during these outbreaks points to lack of clean drinking water and sanitation, weak health services, and health staff strikes.

Urban areas have been more greatly affected by the cholera outbreak than the rural districts. There is ongoing concern that with the continued lack of access to clean water, families traveling home from urban centers to the rural districts for Christmas, and the rainy season about to begin, the number of cholera cases will greatly increase in the rural districts.

The Zimbabwe healthcare system is collapsing with the economic crisis facing the country.

Staff are poorly paid, if at all, and strikes or “go slows” are becoming increasingly common. Medicines and materials to treat even common illnesses are rare or unavailable, particularly in rural areas.

Rural health care centers are ill-equipped to handle outbreaks in their areas.

Purpose:

- To provide relevant support and advice to CARE Zimbabwe Emergency Teams and partners based in the affected area to enable a more effective and efficient response;

- Provide assistance and guidance to support the team in engaging with government, UN and NGO coordination and information management systems to help ensure that CARE’s assistance effectively meets priority needs and there are no significant gaps in assistance for populations in the affected areas;

- Support CARE Zimbabwe external relations as needed (donors, visiting CARE staff, etc.); and- Assist CARE Zimbabwe as required in proposal preparation, meeting reporting requirements, etc.

Responsibilities and Tasks:

Under the direct supervision of CARE Zimbabwe Acting Country Director:

- Conduct assessments and provide advice on the design and approach used for delivering humanitarian assistance.

- Identify technical assistance or logistical needs and assist in training and ongoing capacity assessments.- Support CD and Emergency Team in preparation of SitReps and other reports.

- Review and ensure that all response mechanisms and strategies are consistent with a humanitarian accountability framework, relevant SPHERE standards, and essential environmental mitigation measures.

- Identify critical gaps for future technical capacity building.

- Provide regular reports to CARE ZIMBABWE status of emergency response, strengths and gaps.

- Participate in key coordination meetings as needed.

- Provide technical assistance and advice to key Emergency Team members and external advisors on short term assignments to the CO.

- Participate in ongoing emergency coordination team meetings.

Key Internal Contacts:
- Acting Country Director

Key External Contacts:
- Governmental, UN and NGO agencies responding to the emergency.

Duty Station:
- Based in Harare, with frequent travel

Core Competencies Required:
- Demonstrated experience in coordination of emergency response (cholera).
- Expertise/Knowledge in Health
- Familiarity with CARE reporting procedures.
- Familiarity with SPHERE and HAP standards, CARE programming principles and efforts to mitigate sexual and child exploitation.
- Excellent interpersonal and coaching skills and ability to work in team environment.
- Excellent English, writing and communication skills.
- Ability to function comfortably in a multi-cultural environment in sometimes difficult living conditions.

How to apply

Contact Information:
Please apply online at http://www.care.ca or http://www.careersunited.org .
You will need to register before submitting your resume.

Note:We thank all candidates for the responses to this advertisement. However, we regret that we will be able to contact only short listed candidates

Reference Code: RW_7NPUSX-6

Closing date: 05 Feb 2009