Delegate, Community Engagement and Accountabilitynew

Organizational Context

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is the world’s largest humanitarian network, with 191 member National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. IFRC uses the Triple R – response, resilience and respect – to deliver on Strategy 2030. IFRC responds to disasters and crises, ensuring timely, coordinated and locally led humanitarian action. IFRC supports its members in building community resilience in the areas of climate and environment, health and wellbeing, and migration and displacement. IFRC promotes respect for our fundamental principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity, and universality, including in our work on values, power and inclusion. The IFRC focuses throughout on our core mandate – our raison d’être – of strategic and operational coordination, humanitarian diplomacy, National Society development, and accountability.
IFRC is led by its Secretary General and has its Headquarters in Geneva and five regional offices in Africa (Nairobi); the Americas (Panama); Asia Pacific (Kuala Lumpur); Europe (Budapest); and MENA (Beirut) as well as representation offices, service centres and delegations across the globe.
IFRC has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment and other forms of harassment, abuse of authority, discrimination, and lack of integrity (including but not limited to financial misconduct). IFRC also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles.
This position is based in Bunia, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), within the IFRC Country Cluster Delegation covering the Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi. Depending on operational needs and the evolution of the Bundibugyo Virus Disease (BVD)/Ebola response, the role may require frequent travel within the cluster countries and deployment to affected areas.
Community Engagement and Accountability (CEA) is at the core of Red Cross and Red Crescent programming and operations. It is an approach geared towards putting people and communities, vulnerable to and affected by crisis, at the centre of what we do. It encompasses a set of activities that embed and integrate participation, communication, feedback and learning throughout the program cycle, in service delivery and in strategy development. The goal is to enable people and communities to lead and shape positive, sustainable changes in their own lives, communities and society.
The CEA Delegate will support the planning, implementation, and coordination of CEA activities, ensuring that affected communities are informed, consulted, and actively involved in response efforts. The position contributes to strengthening trust, community participation, and the effectiveness of humanitarian interventions through evidence-based feedback and accountability mechanisms.

Job Purpose

The Community Engagement and Accountability (CEA) Delegate supports the National Society and response partners to ensure that affected communities are at the centre of decision-making throughout the response. The role strengthens systems and approaches that enable communities to access trusted information, participate in decisions that affect them, express concerns and priorities, provide feedback, and influence response strategies and services. The Delegate works across operational sectors to ensure that community perspectives, experiences, and priorities are systematically collected, analysed, and used to inform decisions, strengthen accountability, improve programme quality, and build trust between communities and responders.

Job Duties and Responsibilities

Strategic leadership and technical support

• Provide technical leadership on community engagement and accountability within the BVD response.
• Support the integration of community-centered and accountable approaches across all response sectors and operational pillars.
• Advise National Society leadership and operational teams on emerging community concerns, priorities, perceptions, and recommendations.
• Promote the systematic use of community evidence to strengthen programme design, implementation, monitoring, and adaptation.

Community participation and accountability

• Support the establishment and strengthening of inclusive mechanisms that enable communities to participate in response planning, implementation, and review.
• Ensure the meaningful participation of women, men, youth, older persons, persons living with disabilities, and other potentially marginalized groups in decision-making processes.
• Promote transparency and two-way communication between communities and responders.
• Support operational teams to demonstrate how community feedback has informed decisions, actions, and services.
Community feedback and insights
• Lead or support the establishment and strengthening of community feedback systems across affected areas.
• Ensure community questions, concerns, complaints, suggestions, perceptions, and recommendations are systematically collected, analyzed, and shared with decision-makers.
• Facilitate the development of actionable recommendations based on community insights.
• Support the tracking and monitoring of actions taken in response to community feedback.
• Strengthen mechanisms for closing the feedback loop and ensuring communities receive timely responses.

Community intelligence and analysis

• Support the collection and interpretation of community insights through multiple sources, including feedback mechanisms, social listening, community dialogues, rapid assessments, perception studies, and qualitative research.
• Analyse trends related to trust, information needs, barriers to service uptake, rumours, misinformation, concerns, and community priorities.
• Produce regular community insight reports, briefings, and recommendations for operational leadership and technical teams.
• Support the integration of community-generated evidence into response planning and decision-making processes.

Support to operational response activities

• Work closely with health, surveillance, case management, infection prevention and control, safe and dignified burials, protection, disaster management, logistics, and communications teams to ensure community perspectives inform operational decisions.
• Support the adaptation of response activities based on evolving community needs, concerns, and expectations.
• Contribute to the identification and mitigation of barriers that limit access to services, acceptance of interventions, or trust in the response.
Information ecosystem and trusted communication
• Support assessments of community information needs, communication preferences, trusted information sources, and barriers to accessing information.
• Advise operational teams on approaches to improve access to clear, timely, and trusted information.
Internal
• Support strategies that strengthen trust, address misinformation, and improve understanding of response activities and services.

Job Duties and Responsibilities (continued)

Coordination and representation

• Represent the National Society and IFRC's community engagement and accountability approach in relevant coordination forums, technical working groups, and partner meetings.
• Promote collaboration and alignment around community priorities and evidence across humanitarian and public health actors.
• Foster partnerships with community leaders, community-based organizations, civil society groups, and local networks to strengthen community participation and accountability.

Capacity strengthening and mentorship

• Build the capacity of staff, volunteers, and response teams to implement community engagement and accountability approaches during emergency operations.
• Deliver training, mentoring, coaching, and field accompaniment on community engagement methodologies and tools.
• Support the development and adaptation of guidance, tools, standard operating procedures, and learning materials.
• Strengthen National Society capacity to sustain community engagement and accountability practices beyond the immediate response.

Monitoring, learning and documentation

• Monitor the implementation and effectiveness of community engagement and accountability activities.
• Document lessons learned, promising practices, innovations, and operational challenges.
• Support after-action reviews, operational learning exercises, and knowledge-sharing initiatives.
• Contribute to donor reporting, operational updates, and institutional learning products as required.

Duties applicable to all staff

• Work actively towards the achievement of IFRC’s goals.
• Abide by and work in accordance with the Red Cross and Red Crescent principles.
• Perform any other work-related duties and responsibilities that may be assigned by the line manager.
  

Education

• University degree (in Communication or Social/Behavioural Sciences i.e. Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology or Health Education) or relevant experience is required.
• IMPACT or equivalent knowledge. Preferred

Experience

Required

• 3-5 years of relevant professional experience in CEA, communication for development, or social mobilisation for a humanitarian organisation;
• Experience responding to humanitarian emergencies, complex crisis or conflict situations. Experience of responding to food crises, forced displacement or epidemics in Africa an advantage.
• Experience setting up and managing tools for communicating with communities. For example, radio programmes, TV shows, SMS systems, community committees, social mobilisation or mobile cinemas and community dramas etc.
• Proven experience in planning targeted and appropriate behaviour change communication strategies.
• Experience setting up and managing accountability to communities’ systems. For example, feedback and complaints mechanisms, rumour tracking systems, or participatory planning processes.
• Experience of coaching and developing staff and volunteers to build long-term capacity and create ownership, including planning and delivering training courses.

Preferred

• Experience of designing and implementing assessments, community consultations, research and/or focus groups discussions.
• Experience working with Red Cross/Red Crescent National Societies.

Knowledge, Skills and Languages

• Good planning skills, with the ability to identify areas for improvements in operations through the integration of CEA approaches and activities. Required
• Good coordination skills, with the ability to work with and engage people across multiple countries and cultures, both in person and remotely. Required
• Good knowledge of Red Cross Red Crescent disaster management cycle, including planning and response processes and procedures. Preferred
• Good knowledge of protection, gender and inclusion issues in emergency response operations. Preferred
• Highly motivated proactive self-starter, able to set and achieve goals using own initiative. Required
• Strong written, presentation, facilitation and training skills. Required
• Ability to multi-task and work under stressful conditions to meet deadlines.Required
• Ability and willingness to travel extensively (up to 60% of the time) to support field operations. Required
• Excellent interpersonal, communication and networking skills. Required
• Demonstrated core proficiency in (a) digital communication & collaboration, (b) basic digital content creation, (c) digital safety & security, (d) data literacy, and (e) problem solving with technology (including responsible use of AI assistants.Required
• Understanding of and commitment to IFRC’s mission and values. Required

Languages

Fluent spoken and written English. Required

Good command of French. Required

Good command of another IFRC official language (Spanish or Arabic). Preferred

 

Competencies, Values and Comments

• Values: Respect for diversity; Integrity; Professionalism; Accountability;
• Core competencies: Communication; Collaboration and teamwork; Judgement and decision making; National society and customer relations; Creativity and innovation; Building trust;