Background:

WALIS is a six-year task order under the Water and Development Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity Contract in its last year of implementation. It aims to improve the capacity of regional, national, and sub-national water and sanitation organizations to implement policies, strategies, and plans that will deliver sustainable WASH services consistent with the Sustainable Development Goals. More information on the WALIS Program can be found on the USAID Global Waters Website.

The program is implemented by DAI Global, LLC, a leading international development firm tackling the toughest development challenges in the most demanding environments for many of the world’s best known bilateral and multilateral donors, private corporations and philanthropies. The Team implementing WALIS is based in the Washington, DC area and manages work in sub-Saharan Africa.

Function of the Position:

The Communications Specialist will be responsible for working with partners and stakeholders to collect and disseminate communications to facilitate cross-sector learning as well as using technical reports and program materials produced under the WALIS Program to generate new communications and outreach products to share lessons learned and program results to current WALIS stakeholders and a broader audience. The majority of the communications products will be technical in nature with a wide variety of target audiences in mind, including but not limited to USAID, African Water and Sanitation Ministers, and general WASH stakeholders.

Task Duties:

•  Develop or edit high-quality communication products which include, but are not limited to, blogs, articles, press releases, tweets, infographics, success stories, and other products or updates for USAID’s globalwaters.org website and its related Water Currents series that communicate compelling storylines of the WALIS Program’s relevance and impact;
•  Utilize the globalwaters.org website and related social media channels to build broader awareness of the WALIS Program’s activities, lessons learned, and results. Assist with editing, layout, design, and formatting of WALIS deliverables and project communications materials;
•  Support the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) engagement with member states to collect and share best practices for COVID-19 response in order to strengthen AMCOW’s role as a regional sector knowledge management platform;
•  In collaboration with their WALIS Teammates and strategic partners and/or consultants/subcontractors, identify compelling storylines and success stories that can be developed into communications products. Match storylines with the most fitting communication products (e.g., blog, written success story, infographic);
•  Draft communication products with technical inputs from their WALIS Teammates and strategic partners (e.g., USAID, AMCOW, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the African Water Association);
•  Support writing, editing, layout, design, and formatting of project communications products;
•  Develop a communications calendar that coordinates the release of project and coordinated partner communication products with key events and recognition days such as International Women’s Day, World Water Day, Earth Day, World Water Week, AfricaSan, World Water Forum, and Africa Water Week, etc;
•  Promote WALIS activities and its supported activities through AMCOW via social media channels, including USAID platforms, AMCOW, and other water sector platforms with the aim of driving new traffic to WALIS’s microsite on globalwaters.org and others;
•  Facilitate communication flow throughout AMCOW’s managed collaboration platform and liaise with platform vendor to ensure a user-friendly experience;
•  Provide support to AMCOW to build their technical capacity at managing the online collaboration platform; and
•  Additional related tasks as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications:

•  A bachelor’s degree in communications, journalism, public relations, or a related field plus three years of work experience;
•  Experience using Adobe Suite;
•  Proven experience preparing communication products for USAID including blogs, programmatic articles, success stories, and infographics;
•  Knowledge of environment, WASH and/or health sectors;
•  Strong organizational, coordination, and project management skills;
•  Fluent English speaker with ability to speak and write clearly and succinctly to targeted audiences; and
•  Demonstrated knowledge and use of USAID Branding Standards, Code of Federal Regulations 700.16, ADS 320 Branding and Marking, the Associated Press Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style.

Source: https://phf.tbe.taleo.net/phf04/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=DAINC&cws=1&rid=5378