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 2.6 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.

Under the guidance and direct supervision of the Communication Specialist and in collaboration with the Government and Corporate relationships Specialist, the Social Media Officer  will support the advocacy and communication activities of the Better Than Cash Alliance.

For more information on BTCA, please visit the website: http://betterthancash.org/.

Duties and Responsibilities

  • Develop a sophisticated social media strategy for the Better Than Cash Alliance, and conceptualize, design, plan, formulate and manage the Alliance's social media presence including Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In and possibly other;
  • Manage and lead social media campaigns to strengthen BTCA's brand awareness among target audiences and amplify key moments in the Alliance’s advocacy and communication work in collaboration with the Alliance members and partners’ communication teams;
  • Coordinate the development of campaign assets, such as infographics and other visuals;
  • Keep abreast of the trends and promote in-house social media usage, suggest tweets and other social media engagement for other officers and train them when needed; 
  • Monitor and evaluate results and impact of communications activities on social media platforms; report on developments, trends and attitudes regarding the electronic payments space;
  • Coordinate the Better Than Cash Alliance newsletter, including desk research, information collection from partners and writing stories, identifying relevant stories from others resources, formatting and sending it to Better Than Cash subscribers. Promote proactively the product to increase readership;
  • Monitor online news resourcespublic opinion and press, compile and send a daily press review of relevant issues;  identify issues and trends, advise management on appropriate action/responses; 
  • Research and write blog posts for the website, op-eds and letters to the editor;
  • Promote the Better Than Cash Alliance knowledge products (publications, webinars) on digital media;
  • Perform any other duties in Communications as necessary.

Competencies

Functional Competencies:
  • Strong analytical skills; 
  • Client orientation;
  • Uses a proactive approach to foresee road-blocks and suggest solutions;
  • Ability to manage workload with minimum supervision and collaborate with a wide range of colleagues and partners; 
  • Strong editorial and writing skills; 
  • Excellent interpersonal skills: being able to listen and collaborate with a wide range of players, being able to work independently while meeting deadlines, being pro-active and taking initiatives but also able to identify threats in social media use;
  • Excellent writing and editing skills in English, strong analytical skills.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:
  • Master's or Bachelor's degree in Communications, Journalism, Public policy or a related field.
Experience:
  • 3 years of professional experience with digital marketing, social media/networks, web communications or web journalism;
  • Good understanding of social media platforms including Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Wikis, blogs etc;
  • Successful track record of developing innovative and effective social media marketing strategies and campaigns, including researching, curating, writing, editing content;
  • Experience in financial inclusion, financial sector or international development desired.

Language:

  • Fluency in English. Knowledge of French and/or Spanish is an asset.
Evaluation Method:
 
Consultants will be evaluated based on UNDP’s cumulative analysis method. When using this weighted scoring method, the award of the contract shall be made to the consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:
  • Responsive/compliant/acceptable; and
  • Having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical (70%) and financial (30%) criteria.
Evaluation Criteria:

Technical (based on CV, written test and interview) - 70%:
  • Experience (20%);
  • Written test (20%);
  • Interview (30%).
Financial Proposal - 30%
 
The consultant is requested to provide his/her daily consultancy fee.