Key Responsibilities
1. Training Female SBC Actors
- Conduct female-only training sessions for:
- Community extenders
- Social mobilizers
- Community health workers
- SBC staff members
- Train participants on core SBC concepts, including listening, trust-building, empathy, and behavior analysis related to polio vaccination.
- Use simple language, examples, role plays, and group discussions suitable for different education levels.
- Support SBC staff to strengthen their field mentoring and coaching skills.
2. Understanding Community Behaviors
- Help trainees analyze why families accept, delay, or refuse polio vaccination.
- Discuss social norms, beliefs, fears, gender dynamics, and access challenges affecting caregivers’ decisions.
- Strengthen skills in community listening, including gathering insights through face-to-face interaction and safe digital feedback channels.
3. Managing Misinformation and Rumors
- Train trainees to identify rumors, myths, and misinformation related to polio vaccination.
- Promote use of UNICEF-approved SBC messages and locally trusted explanations.
- Support trainees and SBC staff to track rumors and share them through existing digital feedback and reporting systems.
4. Addressing Community Concerns and Resistance
- Train trainees to listen respectfully to community concerns without judgment or pressure.
- Build skills to respond to concerns related to vaccine safety, religion, trust, and access using empathy-based SBC approaches.
- Promote problem-solving with caregivers rather than one-way messaging.
5. Digital Community Engagement
- Build understanding of how digital tools (such as SMS, mobile reporting, and messaging platforms where available) support two-way communication.
- Guide trainees on safe and responsible use of digital tools to collect community feedback and share correct information.
- Reinforce coordination between community-level engagement and SBC reporting systems.
6. Documentation and Reporting
- Maintain simple records of trainings and participants.
- Document key community concerns, rumor trends, and successful SBC practices.
- Share regular feedback with supervisors to support program learning and adaptation.
- University degree in Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sociology, Anthropology, Communication for Development, Education, International Development, or a related field. (A Master’s degree is an asset.)
- Minimum 5 years of experience in Social and Behavior Change (SBC), community engagement, social mobilization, or public health communication, preferably within immunization, polio eradication, or child health programs.
- Demonstrated experience in training and mentoring community-based workers and/or program staff, including facilitation of adult learning and participatory approaches.
- Strong understanding of behavioral and social drivers, community norms, gender dynamics, and trust-building approaches influencing health behaviors in humanitarian or development settings.
- Experience working in hard-to-reach, underserved, or conflict-affected contexts, with the ability to adapt SBC approaches to sensitive cultural and social environments.
Please submit resumes in PDF only to Jobs@Lapis-group.com
Lapis is a leading media, education, research, project management, and strategic communications company operating throughout the Middle East, Northern Africa, South and Central Asia. Lapis supports local and global efforts to bring about positive change in frontier markets and challenging environments. From delivering education projects to strategic communications and project design, for nearly two decades, Lapis’ work has framed how individuals, communities, and nations see their world. We employ an unparalleled understanding of complex media and sociopolitical environments. We stay at the forefront of changes in audiences’ media and technology consumption and combine this systems-level knowledge with our on-ground expertise to tailor carefully analyzed and creatively engaging products. Our clients include governments, foundations, international organizations, and the private sector.