Vacancy Announcement

Position Title: Young Designer

Department/Program: RISE

Reports to: Smart Start Experience

Based in: Afar, SNNPR and Oromiya regions

Required Number: 12 (4 in each regions)

Duration of contract: Indefinite Quantity Contract to be engaged on call basis when a need arises Remuneration: As per organization scale

 Who we are?

We’re Population Services International (PSI), the world’s leading non‐profit social marketing organization. We work to make it easier for people in the developing world to lead healthier lives and plan the families they desire by marketing affordable products and services that range from mosquito nets to contraceptives to HIV testing. We are a $560m enterprise based in Washington, DC, operating in the private and public sectors in more than 65 countries.

Join us!

There are over 9,000 “PSI’ers” around the world. It’s a diverse group of entrepreneurs and professionals with an unusually wide range of backgrounds - from the medical industry to the music business - all with unique skills we bring to the job.

PSI/Ethiopia wants reimagine healthcare, put the consumer at the center, and whenever possible, bring quality care to the front door.  We achieve health impact in Ethiopia by working with both government and private partners and harvesting technology innovation to bring quality care closer to communities, schools, and homes.   We empower consumers by including them in the design of healthcare solutions, offering them more healthcare choices, and helping them to have a voice in influencing national priorities.  We work with all market actors in the health system to understand their needs, designing and delivering solutions so that market systems can sustainably serve consumers for the long term, helping to support the Government of Ethiopia in achieving Universal Health Coverage. 

We are looking for Young Designers are young people from ages 18-24 who will be engaged in PSI and co-design family planning programs for rural adolescents in Ethiopia. We believe that young people are experts in identifying adolescent reproductive health issues. Young people are generally more effective than adults at understanding the needs of their peers and knowing how to reach and engage them because of their deep experience and understanding of adolescence and young adulthood in Ethiopia. Also, the Young Designer enables and supports the design and implementation of impactful and meaningful user-centered solutions by contributing to insight gathering, synthesis, prototype development, and testing, and program implementation, adding value by providing youth perspective and insights throughout the process.  

 Key Result Areas:

• Participation in trainings and events
• Facilitation and engagement
• Insight generation
• Contribution to prototype development, testing and implementation
• Supporting research and reporting

 Main Duties and Responsibilities:

• Attend training on how to interact with rural married and in-school 15-19 years old girls and boys, generate insights, meaningfully contribute to and influence decisions in the program.
• Take part in initial program meetings to start building mutual trust and relationship between adolescent and young research participants and to inspire adult research participants.
• Attend various awareness creation and advocacy events whenever invited by the team to be the voice of the 15-19 years old married girls and in school adolescents.
• Shape the design and delivery and be part of the inspiration boot camps, data collection, and meaning making process.
• Interact with youth champion groups to get insight on married and in-school adolescents and serve as links between the program and the end users (i.e. 15-19 year old girls).
• Participate in insight generation exercise together with A360 (Smart Start) and ASRH In-school project teams.
• Participate in formative research and contribute toward insight synthesis with adult collaborators.
• Contribute to brainstorming sessions, bring unique perspectives, navigate through the very difficult dynamics and discussions, contribute to prototype development workshops, and present findings to the larger group.
• Bring an alternative view and inspiration to the Adolescent sexual and reproductive health and contraception discourse.
• Contribute in prototype testing, connect and engage with end users in the field in order to test prototypes, deliver messages, products, services associated with prototypes.
• Provide feedback on prototypes, bring the youth perspective to interpret the feedback on prototypes, shape the discussion on what is feasible and not, how to accommodate feedback from end users, suggest channels which may not be obvious to adult audiences.
• Support the communication, partnership, advocacy, and promotion efforts of the program.
• Influence the implementation process by bringing expertise, experience, and interaction to the program; collaborate with program implementers in regions to support implementation activities.

Background

• Grade 10 or 12 completed with two (2) years of experience in youth club activities

• Conversant with local language and cultural context of the region where A360 is implemented

• 18-24 years old.

• Possess good facilitation skills with peers (evidence of previous facilitation with peers of the same age and/or slightly younger).

• Experience in community-level activities / youth clubs and preferably able to show participation certificate or letter of support; enthusiastic to contribute to communities and flexible enough to accommodate culturally sensitive issues (e.g. appropriate dress, slang, etc.)

• Basic command of English

• Willingness to travel in the field (rural, urban and or semi-urban sites)