Background

UNCDF is the UN’s capital investment agency for the world’s least developed countries (LDCs). It creates new opportunities for poor people and their communities by increasing access to microfinance and investment capital. UNCDF focuses on Africa and the poorest countries of Asia and the Pacific, with a special commitment to countries emerging from conflict or crisis. It provides seed capital – grants and loans – and technical support to help microfinance institutions reach more poor households and small businesses, and local governments finance the capital investments – water systems, feeder roads, schools, irrigation schemes – that will improve poor peoples’ lives.

UNCDF works to enlarge peoples’ choices: it believes that poor people and communities should take decisions about their own development. Its programmes help to empower women – over 50% of the clients of UNCDF-supported microfinance institutions are women – and its expertise in microfinance and local development is shaping new responses to food insecurity, climate change and other challenges. UNCDF works in challenging environments – remote rural areas, countries emerging from conflict – and paves the way for others to follow. Its programmes are designed to catalyze larger investment flows from the private sector, development partners and national governments, for significant impact on the Millennium Development Goals, especially Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger, Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women, and Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability.

Established by the General Assembly in 1966 and with headquarters in New York, UNCDF is an autonomous UN organization affiliated with UNDP.

Of the 2.5 billion people who live on less than $2 per day, an estimated 90 percent lack access to formal financial services. As a result, most poor households operate almost entirely in the informal and cash economy. This means that they use cash, physical assets (e.g. jewelry and livestock), or informal institutions (e.g. money lenders and payment couriers) to meet their financial needs – from receiving wage remittances, to saving up to buy fertilizer, to insuring against illness. These informal tools, however, tend to be insecure, expensive, and hard to use. And when large problems arise, such as a major illness in the family, the tools often break down completely, leaving households exposed.

One of the reasons it is too costly to provide poor people formal financial alternatives is because most poor households conduct most or all of their financial transactions in cash. The best way to reduce the costs of reaching poor people with financial services is to help shift the majority of their cash-based financial transactions into digital form through mobile phones or other digital interface. The digitization of cash also creates opportunities for delivering value beyond cost savings.

Electronic payment technologies offer a more effective, efficient, transparent and often safer means of disbursing payments while also promoting financial inclusion and advancing aid effectiveness. Notwithstanding these benefits and success in a few countries, such as Kenya, electronic payment technologies have not been globally adopted especially in countries where a large percentage of the population has no relationship with the formal financial services sector and remains “unbanked”.

Through its public-private partnership the Better Than Cash Alliance (BTCA) will bring together a broad cross section of private sector companies, host country governments, multilateral and bilateral donors, U.N. Agencies and international NGOs to create a global independent alliance.

The partners who join the BTC Alliance will demonstrate their shared commitments to:
  • Broader recognition of the benefits of replacing the use of physical cash with electronic payments; 
  • Improved understanding and sharing of approaches and lessons learned in replacing the use of physical cash with electronic payment systems; and 
  • Increased use of electronic payments systems in organizations’ programs and operations to promote financial inclusion, increased transparency and efficiency.
The Better Than Cash Alliance (BTCA) is looking to contract an individual consultant to supports the implementation of the communications strategy (coordination of the communication team, coordination of BTCA corporate communication, media channels and knowledge outreach and monitoring results). Under the overall direction of the BTCA Managing Director, the consultant is also expected to coordinate  the effective implementation of the advocacy strategy based on the recommendations of an advocacy scoping study to be completed by July 2013. For more information on BTCA, please visit the website: http://betterthancash.org/
 

Duties and Responsibilities

Assist with the Coordination of the communication team
  • Work closely with internal staff (administrative support and interns) as well as a wide team of consultants working on media placement, web upgrade, content production, graphic design and events organization and implementing BTCA communication strategy
  • Coordination of the work plans, weekly conversations to define/confirm expected milestones and processes to reach them, results monitoring
  • Coordination of procurement processes (contract, payments) and evaluation of the team
  • Coordination of internal feedback loops to include inputs from other UNCDF staff members and BTCA subcommittees and to report to Programme Management Committee and Managing Director
Assist with the Management of:
 
BTCA corporate communication
  • Oversee BTCA branding (update branding guidelines, follow up proper usage of BTCA trade mark) and ensure consistency of key messages across the different BTCA media channels 
  • Oversee the production of corporate documents (brochure, banners)
  • Liaise with Alliance members and Technical assistance recipients to produce fact sheets and feature storie
  • Liaise with Media team to produce as needed press releases and conferences to promote Alliance members
Oversee BTCA branding (update branding guidelines, follow up proper usage of BTCA trade mark) and ensure consistency of key messages across the different BTCA media channels 
 
BTCA knowledge outreach
  • Oversee the creation of publication templates
  • Coordinate repackaging of research outputs into wide audience formats (article, video, etc.)
  • Manage dissemination of BTCA publications to a wide network
Editorial coordination of BTCA electronic channels (Website, blog, Newsletter and social media)
BTCA Website
  • Oversee the team in charge of the upgrade of the web platform
  • Identify new content that could be needed, coordinate and produce as required new Web pages
  • Prepare and implement with the web team weekly plan to update website
BTCA Blog (attached to BTCA Website)
  • Keep abreast of new information among Alliance members and electronic payments sector, identify key stories and resources posted in other media that deserve cross posting and implement updates with the Media team
  • Liaise with the Managing Director and follow up with Media team to produce blog posts on her behalf
BTCA Newsletter
  • Oversee the creation of a Newsletter template (shell) in Mailchimp
  • Liaise with Alliance members on a monthly basis to collect and select relevant material, prepare blurbs, lay out the newsletter and disseminate the campaign to BTCA contact database
BTCA social media
  • Review weekly plan to populate social media handles
Monitoring BTCA communication efforts
  • Extract relevant statistics and populate BTCA M&E dashboard
  • Prepare quarterly reports on the traffic on the channels and on usage of the information
Ensure the effective implementation of the advocacy strategy

The consultant will oversee the activities aiming at engaging BTCA with a group of key stakeholders and at creating awareness on the shift and turning that interest into a commitment to the Alliance. The tasks include:
 
Advocacy strategy and implementation activities
  • Overseeing the implementation of a scoping study (May to July)
  • Overseeing an implementation plan according the recommendation of the study 
  • Preparing a tender to recruit a team of consultants to implement the advocacy strategy
Ongoing engagement activities with BTCA key targets
  • Coordination of presentations, side events, bilateral during key events
  • Liaison with events’ organizers to maximize opportunity for visibility 
  • Liaison with Managing Director and Alliance members to support their advocacy efforts
  • Liaison with Alliance Members to coordinate country launches gathering the payments eco-system 
  • Tracking relevant information on engagement and monitoring success
Media placement
  • Coordination of the Media outreach to increase BTCA visibility at the global and local level
 The consultant is expected to take on any other related duties as required.

Competencies

  • Strong analytical skills
  • Client orientation
  • Uses a proactive approach to foresee road-blocks and suggest solutions
  • Ability to manage workload with minimum supervision 
  • Strong editorial and writing skills

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

  • Master's degree in Communications, Journalism, Knowledge Management, or a related field.

Experience:

  • At least 7 years of relevant experience at the national or international level.
  • Solid experience in matrix management, project management, team coordination and reporting. 
  • Solid experience in managing corporate communication and knowledge dissemination; experience with advocacy campaigns targeting decision makers from the public and private sector an asset.
  • Experience in managing web platforms and cloud solutions (especially Mailchimp). Experience with Word Press an asset. 
  • Solid experience in drafting and editing communication material and excellent analytical and writing skills.
  • Experience in managing events organization and media relationship.
  • Previous experience with a multilateral or international organization is an asset as well as an experience in the field of financial inclusion and electronic payments.
  • Management experience 

Language:

  • Fluency in Spanish an asset.

FC: G2950