Community Support Officer

Pangaea Zimbabwe Aids Trust (PZAT)

Jul. 21, 2024

Job Description

The Wild4Life program, housed within the administrative infrastructure of Pangaea Zimbabwe, is embarking on an ambitious strategy to scale-up operations in Zimbabwe to additional districts in the Matabeleland Province, and ultimately to other districts throughout the country, focusing on improving the quality of primary health care through resilient health systems. The Wild4Life program focuses on building capacity for health facilities and communities to improve health outcomes among rural populations through integrated mentorship targeting multidisciplinary facility teams, community health workers and health centre committees, integrated outreaches to hard-to-reach areas, implementation of differentiated service delivery models and application of continuous quality improvement tools and techniques. Monitoring, evaluation, and learning are key to not only achieving the program results but also to ensuring that the information generated is reflected upon and used to continuously improve performance.

Since its inception, the Wild4Life program has evaluated its program through the collection and collation of facility-level clinical data, and by tracking program outputs and progress against targets.

As Wild4Life prepares for its programmatic expansion, there is a need for the program to develop and implement a more rigorous monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) plan to inform ongoing program roll-out, to assess the contribution of the program on health outcomes among the clients at supported facilities, and to measure the program’s capacity to promote the efficient use of resources among Ministry of Health and Child Care (MOHCC) health executive teams at district level. Having a rigorous MEL plan also will help lay the groundwork for an external impact and cost-effectiveness evaluation of the Wild4Life program.

Location: Matabeleland North

Duties and Responsibilities

The Community Support Officer will be responsible for the timely attainment of the following deliverables for Wild4Life, and responsibilities are subject to change upon changing the scope of the program:

Lead person for community health interventions working Field officer and interns.
Support supervision of Village health workers to ensure health related duties carried out in the community are well documented and patients are referred for services to the clinic.
Conducting VHW infield mentoring and collecting data from the field for program management
Establishing and supervision of HIV positive adolescent support groups and PMTCT mother baby-pair support groups.
Coordinating Children support group activities ensuring children have access to Viral load testing and enhanced adherence counselling is instituted where needed.
Focal person for mental health screening for community lay cadres using the friendship bench model or any other as required.
Rolling out the CARGS programs in the district and offering support supervision of CARG groups and ensuring the quality of care remains high for patients who have opted for the model.
Organising and mobilising communities for community dialogues around health-related matters. Cascading Index Testing to the communities in the district.
Engage health centre committees for facility infrastructure maintenance and improvements including community engagement.
Conduct trainings and refresher trainings for community health cadres.
Participate in stakeholder meetings occurring within and outside the district.
Represent and advance the interests for PZ in fora where you are selected as an organisation representative.
Participate in budget and work planning for activities funded within the funding cycle.
Compiling monthly reports and quarterly reports as well as monthly statistics for community programs.
Formulating budgets for VHW food hamper incentives and refreshments for support groups and any work -related training.
Identify health issues that need community attention and conduct community dialogues to help address the problems.
Any other duties as may be assigned by the programs manager.

Qualifications and Experience

A minimum Degree in Public Health, Social sciences, Nursing or equivalent.
A Nursing Diploma or Community Nursing Diploma is an added advantage.
Excellent Computer skills, excel and and knowledge of HIV and AIDS indicators.
Excellent interpersonal skills and oral communication and writing skills, including experience in working as part of a team.
A good understanding of the M&E systems used by Ministry of Health and Child Care DHIS2, HER, EPMS ,LMIS.
Working experience in an NGO sector is a prerequisite.
A clean class 4 driver’s license.