Capacity-Building Officer at Translators without Borders (TWB)

Translators without Borders is a unique non-profit organization that helps humanitarian organizations communicate more effectively with vulnerable populations in the right languages. TWB created the first translation and language program specifically for crisis response and is now deploying that program in northeast Nigeria.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Capacity-Building Officer

Location: Maiduguri, Borno
Contract length: Until the end of March 2019, with the possibility of extension/ national post
Hours: Full-time
Travel: Some travel to field locations in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states
Reports To: Program Manager

Background
TWB conducted an initial assessment of language support needs in the humanitarian response in north-east Nigeria in July 2017. This found very significant levels of need: in a context where people affected by the conflict and food crisis speak dozens of first languages, humanitarian communication is overwhelmingly in English and Hausa. Organizations lack basic information about the languages spoken and understood by affected people, and struggle to hire either language professionals or national staff and volunteers with the right language skills. Humanitarian staff voiced fears for the impact this could have on the accuracy of needs assessments, the effectiveness of program design, accountability, and conflict sensitivity. So far TWB has developed a protection, mental health and psychosocial support and camp coordination and camp management glossary apps, conducted comprehension testing with IDPs, enumerators, and field staff, worked with partners on collecting and mapping language data, carried out trainings on the basics of interpreting and is piloting a multilingual feedback mechanism.

There is still much to do to fully understand how language barriers affect data collection, two way communication between crisis affected people and humanitarian agencies, and access to services. The research planned over the coming months includes better understanding the impact of language on service accessibility, the effectiveness and limitations of multi-lingual audio messaging, and the relevance of language in enabling crisis affected people to express their needs.

The Role

• The Capacity-Building Officer will be responsible for adapting, localising, delivering and monitoring TWB’s training curricula. The Capacity-Building Officer will be expected to train translators, interpreters, field workers and volunteers of humanitarian agencies providing services in the northeast Nigeria as well as working to raise awareness of the language barriers present in the response overall.
• This role will involve increasing the capacity of translators, interpreters, field workers and volunteers to bridge the communication divide between the affected population and the humanitarians working to serve them by helping them to understand complex humanitarian terminology as well as important cultural and linguistic barriers preventing clear communication with the affected population.

Responsibilities

• Training development:
  • Training needs assessment and training plan development
  • Adapt / localise existing curricula
  • Work with the programme team and to review existing training curriculum
  • Identify improvements to the proposed training curriculum, tools and/or delivery method and as well as working to ensure training materials are appropriate for the local context
• Oversee the development of new curricula or modules as needed
• Implement all training
• Support consolidation of field and desk linguistic research
• Training Delivery:
  • Support TWB partners in defining specific training plans
  • Take direct responsibility for all training sessions, for example, from participant identification to training delivery, logistical arrangements, ensuring costs are covered, to providing training reports, etc.
• Monitoring,evaluation and impact documentation and ongoing support:
  • Contribute to designing and implementing participant, session and project evaluation tools
  • Responsible for tracking all training-related activities
  • Work with the programme team and workshop participants to determine the need for follow-up support.

Other duties as required:

• Ensure timely and accurate reporting to feed into overall project reports in line with donor requirements
• Document and disseminate best practices, innovations, lessons learned and proven methodologies
• Contribute other written materials that support TWB needs (brochures, summary project information, etc.)
• Feed into TWB’s advocacy and communication efforts as needed
• Maintain open and professional relationships with the internal TWB team, TWB volunteers, and partners
• Any reasonable duty requested by the line manager
• The role will evolve along with the overall project to reflect the changing language needs of the affected population and humanitarian community in the emergency response as needed.
• The Capacity Building Officer should be a creative self-starter with a strong sense of initiative, who is enthusiastic about the importance of increasing access to knowledge through language. The right candidate is an energetic team player who agrees with TWB´s Core Values and who can work both individually and as part of a team.
• Able to innovate to find creative solutions
• Willing to explore new technologies
• Active listener, diplomatic and solution-oriented
• Previous experience with non-profit organizations, particularly in development and/or disaster relief, is a plus.

Requirements

• Degree (or recognized formal qualifications) in education
• 3+ years of demonstrated experience delivering training and facilitation in a linguistically diverse environment
• Fluent command of Hausa and English required,
• Knowledge of Kanuri and other languages of northeast Nigeria a plus
• Willingness to travel to insecure locations for work
• Experience delivering Training of Trainers (ToT) content
• Formal teaching experience a plus
• Demonstrated community outreach a plus
• Track record of working with small teams
• Familiarity with the translation, language or content industries a plus.

Application Closing Date
5:00pm; 31st December, 2018.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidate should:
Click here to apply online