• The Socio-Economic Expert will work as a member of the team under the direct supervision of the Manager, to ensure that Output  is achieved, activities successfully implemented and the target indicators are reached.

Specific responsibilities will include:

• Community Mobilization
• Facilitate primary group formation, savings and credit group development and community development committees (CDCs);
• Facilitate formation and functioning of local level Clusters and Federation of the CDCs and organize exchange visits between the communities and between towns for sharing experience, knowledge, skills and capacity building;

Social Development Activities

• Support CDCs to organize participatory community appraisal sand family surveys to identify community needs, problems, priorities, and opportunities for social development, education and training;
• Provide support to the communities to translate the community development needs into community social development action plans;
• Facilitate negotiations with local service providers, NGOs, community leaders, the private sector for acquiring resources and technical assistance for social development interventions.
• Facilitate the preparation and formulation of Social Development Proposals and Contracts and their implementation by the communities;
• Follow up and supervision of work to ensure quality control during implementation of community contracts by the CDCs;

Economic Development Activities

• Facilitate focus group discussions and community market survey for assessing socio-economic needs of the communities and translate them to socio economic development plan and prepare socio-economic development contracts;
• Support an assessment of the existing capacities and opportunities for economic/business development of the target groups;
• Undertake feasibility studies, preparing business plans by the communities, with special considerations to innovative and creative opportunities;
• Assess local business opportunities and support the communities to identify potential trades and enterprises for life skill enhancement (apprentice) training.
• Support the communities to identify target beneficiaries for employable skill development and organize apprenticeship training programmes at local level;
• Support communities to gain access to financial resources

Training and Capacity Building

• Organize entrepreneurship development training for successful business and employment by the selected community;
• Design, organize and provide relevant training programmes for capacity building among the community leaders, beneficiaries and local government staff;
• Design and develop need based training programmes on financial and business management, technical and life skill development, social and economic development, leadership and community development etc.;