Feb 13, UN-HABITAT Community Mobilization Expert Jobs in Kenya

The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) is the United Nations agency for human settlements that is mandated by UN General Assembly to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all and the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11.

Kenya’s national annual demand for urban housing is 250,000 units, yet the formal sector only provides 50,000 units resulting in an annual housing deficit of 200,000 units, and in the absence of new major streams of housing supply, it is estimated to increase to 8 million in less than a decade. The increased demand for dwelling places is due to rapid urbanisation at 4.3 % p.a., is mainly driven by rural-urban migration, deepening the housing crisis in urban areas.

The Government of Kenya estimates that the investment requirements to meet housing demand over 20 years is up to USD 90 billion. Outside of the formal sector supply of urban housing, the informal sector and individual homeowners generate the bulk of housing units, many funded through cooperatives which are immensely successful in Kenya, owning vast parcels of land and a huge asset base pooled from over 14 million members’ contributions.

Currently, there are 1,980 housing cooperatives with an asset base of KES 21 billion. The Kenya Vision 2030 blue-print projects that cooperative movements have the capacity to contribute upto 25% of the housing stock in urban areas within the country.

This well-established cooperative landscape is not fully utilised to facilitate public private partnerships and finance solutions for affordable homeowner-led housing and for the improvement of small-medium suppliers.

UN-Habitat, through the Regional Office for Africa is collaborating with the EU for the development, implementation and scaling up of the Partnership for the Implementation of the New Urban Agenda (PINUA), which aims to develop models and approaches for filling the gap in affordable housing in the context of Kenya.

PINUA is targeting low-income communities living in informal settlements and peri-urban areas, with the aim of diversifying the houses stocks and supply in Kenya and looking into vulnerable group. PINUA has two major components: affordable housing and slum regeneration.

PINUA is designed to address housing supply gaps, through a roadmap for learning, finetuning and piloting that will allow GoK to access success and scale-up. It envisions a sustainable well-executed Participatory Slum-upgrading Programme (PSUP) building on over success and experience of 12 years of UN Habitat’s work funded by European Commission in 40 ACP countries and 200 cities that has facilitated increased access to basic services, security of tenure and empowerment of informal settlement dwellers through the community managed funds to improve livelihoods.

Limited approaches to blended financing that will support the homeowner-led incremental housing and related green supply chains will be a key area in which PINUA will pilot a socially and economically viable, government endorsed Kenyan model.

There are interesting models in Sri Lanka such as the 22,000 EU-funded houses built by UN-Habitat and Habitat for Humanity and 30 million units under India’s PMAY from 2018-2023 with individual blended grants and loans totaling USD 2400 per household that demonstrate results, however, there is limited attempts to strategically study possible replication approaches as suitable for Kenya. PINUA project seeks to achieve the following outcomes:

Improved enabling environment for Housing Co-production from the Public Sector

Communities are more resilient and proactive eco co-producers. This position is located within the Regional Office for Africa under the Kenya Country Programme and duty station in Kisumu County.

The focus of this job is to support community engagement for the Project, working with local communities for the Project selected sites

and to understand the starting point of key elements of the work, against which later the progress will be measured. The Community Mobilization Expert will be under the overall supervision of UN-Habitat’s Senior Human Settlements Officer in charge of Kenya Country Programme and the direct supervision of the Human Settlements Officer and will be responsible for the following duties.

Duties and Responsibilities

Develop, complete and update community mobilisation and action plans for respective selected sites and ensure that deliverable complies with the implementation plan.

Examine registry data, source in collaboration with the Slum Upgrading Department and the county to develop a real time mobilisation and group actions of the beneficiaries of selected sites with disaggregate for women and youth in the context of the community led house production.

Manage the production of required outputs, taking responsibility for overall progress and use of resources and initiating corrective action where necessary.

Collaborate with other partners particularly the county and national government in the organization of meetings and events (scheduling and confirmation of participation, preparation of material, identification of logistical needs, preparation and management of attendance lists, presentation files, etc.);

Record meetings, activities, projects and interagency initiatives through minutes and reports; or documents related to the project and / or initiatives of the selected sites (letters of invitations, contacts, terms of reference, presentations, among others), as requested

Collaborate in the follow-up of the community group actions and referrals of the deliberations of the meetings and other activities, in coordination with the project team.

Collaborate on the improvement and updating of shared files for each of the project selected sites, initiatives, activities offered to the partners, where applicable including cataloguing and archiving of the physical documentation of the project information, in coordination with the project manager; systematize and analyse information and / or documentation related to the project, initiatives and activities of the selected sites and production of internal reports.

Report to the Project Manager/UN-Habitat on a regular, identify and anticipate in a timely manner, potential risks and issues that may affect project delivery and advise on mitigating measures.

Monitor and participate in internal UN-Habitat and external meetings (with partners), when designated in relation to the project.

Qualifications/special skills

Advanced university degree (master’s degree or equivalent in Community Development, Social Work, Economics, Development Finance, Project Management, International Development, Public Administration, or any related field social sciences is required.

A first-level university degree in combination with two (2) years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree

A minimum of two (2) years of progressively responsible experience in community development/ social work in the context of human settlement/ urban development sectors is required Experience working in an international organization/ non-governmental organization is highly desirable.

Good understanding of the local community content and connected power dynamics is desirable.

Experience in human rights, gender equality or youth empowerment is desirable Knowledge of concepts and main debates related to housing administration, urban planning, housing finance, gender equality, youth is desirable

Languages

Fluency in oral and written English is required. Knowledge of the local dialect is highly desirable.

How to Apply

For more information and job application details, see; UN-HABITAT Community Mobilization Expert Jobs in Kenya

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