Community Liaison Officer

Job Purpose 

To represent TKGM in its engagement with community stakeholders at the Woreda & Kebele levels and provide support across all areas of the TKGM Project. Community Liaison Officers (CLOs) serve as the focal point for managing all relevant stakeholders in the Woreda, facilitating meetings, community dialogue, passing consistent messaging, requests for information (RFIs), community concerns and early conflict prevention.

Responsibilities and Accountabilities

• Attend all appropriate and relevant Woreda, Kebele & community meetings.
• Report the ground-truth of community issues, opinions and perceptions regarding TKGM – especially negative ones.
• Proactively identify and report local issues that might trigger conflict between TKGM and community stakeholders.
• Assist with conflict resolution and prevention efforts.
• Report any concerns, complaints, grievances, and requests for information (RFI) received from stakeholders at the earliest opportunity to the Stakeholder Engagement Manager. 
• Be part of the review process for Stakeholder Matrix, Complaint and Grievance tracking.
• Facilitate as required any TKGM required meetings.
• Provide minutes of all meetings as directed.
• Be part of the development and improvement plan for the wider Stakeholder team.
• Deliver, when appropriate, RFI responses to the inquiring stakeholders.
• Support TKGM’s wider Social Performance initiatives.
• Contribute to the growth of TKGM’s situational awareness of issues and conditions in peripheral communities that might affect its success.

Key Skills/Experience Required

• Minimum 3 years’ experience in related role
• Excellent knowledge of typical community culture and dynamics in West Wollega in general, Tulu Kapi area and his/her specific Woreda and Kebele.
• Experience working in Oromia.
• Strong experience in learning and using new mobile phone app; computer literacy is a must.  
• Strong oral and written communication skills in Amharic and Afan Oromo.
• English is an advantage; the ability and desire to progress to conversational English is essential.
• Experience in managing groups of people.
• Experience in taking direction from a manager and implementing tasks as required.

Minimum Required Qualifications

•  Relevant Bachelor’s degree

Language Requirements

• English speaking and writing.
• Afaan Oromo speaking, and writing will be advantageous.
• Amharic speaking and writing will be advantageous.

Competencies Required

• Conflict resolution - the candidate may be responsible for identifying the root cause of disputes and using mediation skills to encourage resolution.
• Public speaking - the candidate will need to feel comfortable with speaking in front of various Stakeholder groups and communicate the Company messages as directed.
• Marketing - promotional skills are essential for the candidate to effectively share the client’s message with all related Stakeholders. Strong attention to detail and accuracy. 
• Interpersonal skills - a critical duty is building trusting and effective partnerships to facilitate engagement and outreach. To do this, the candidate must be able to listen carefully and quickly relate with many different types of people.
• Collaboration - The candidate must be a strong team player with the ability and willingness to respond to unexpected developments quickly and prioritise tasks.
• Honesty & Integrity - the candidate will be required to transparently report on their work progress without direct physical supervision; they also require the moral courage to report bad news or negative Company perceptions without filtering information.
• Disciplined and energetic - Capable of operating independently in a remote and tough environment
• Communication and Presentation - the candidate must be able to communicate and present his work to line manager and/or anyone else as required.

Other requirements

• Applicant must be from West Wollega
• Must be willing to be based in rural settings and work for extended periods in the Kebeles of the Tulu Kapi area.
• Willingness to travel and work at different locations from time to time

• Highly organized and task orientated.
• Confident 
• Results driven
• Resilient