Senior Environmental Health Officer

NTERNAL AND EXTERNAL VACANCY ADVERTISEMENT

For Senior Environmental Health Officer

Country Office: Ethiopia

Work Base: [Gambella]

Availability: As Soon As Possible

Salary Scale: EMS–07

Insurance – (Life, Group Personal Accident and Medical Insurances are covered upon the organization policies).

Seniority Allowance – paid depending on up the years of service.

Female candidates are highly encouraged to apply for this position.

 

About Action Against Hunger

Action Against Hunger-USA is a global humanitarian organization that takes decisive action against the causes and effects of hunger. We save the lives of malnourished children, and we enable entire communities to be free from hunger. With more than 8,000 staff in over 50 countries, our programs reached 17 million people in 2019.

About the Country Program in Ethiopia

Action Against Hunger has been operational in Ethiopia since 1984 responding to both chronic and acute needs through a multi-sectoral strategy where nutrition, Food Security and Livelihoods, WASH, and Mental Health and Psychosocial Support activities are integrated to have a meaningful impact on people’s resilience. Action Against Hunger currently operates in 5 different regions (Oromia, Somali, Amhara, Benishangul Gumuz, and Gambella) with a portfolio of 20m USD/year of emergency, resilience building, research, and innovation programs. We have a country team of around 600 staff in 17 regional and satellite offices. Our main donors in Ethiopia in 2020/2021 are BHA, ECHO, Europaid, UNHCR, UNICEF, GFFO, BPRM, SIDA, EHF, WFP, CIAA, and others.

Summary of position

The position holder will be supporting operational implementation of the ACF WASH strategy that will steer the WASH sector towards overall efficiency and effectiveness in delivery of WASH services including awareness raising coordination work of safe sanitation and safe hygiene promotion works, and establishment of water scheme management system. The position holder will coordinate with local partners, field team and participate in coordination platforms (WASH, KPC surveys and assessments) representing the ACF. The position will be based in ACF base or sub base and is expected to travel a minimum of 60% of the time to project locations to support staff and monitor field activities.

Purpose

The Senior Environmental Health Officer (SEHO) focus on WASH and Environmental Health interventions in refugee camps and host communities, ensuring alignment with UNHCR standards, SPHERE guidelines, and government refugee response frameworks. This role bridges technical environmental health aspects (water safety, sanitation engineering, sanitation infrastructure, waste management, environmental risk reduction) with public health-oriented WASH (hygiene promotion, disease prevention, and social behavior change). The SEHO ensures that WASH interventions are contextually appropriate, technically sound, and aligned with health and environmental sustainability principles, while also addressing public health risks, outbreak prevention, and community engagement.

 

Engagement

Internal:

• Works closely with the WASH Program Coordinator to ensure the effective integration of environmental health strategies into overall WASH programming.
• Collaborates with the Construction Supervisor to ensure seamless coordination between software (hygiene promotion, behavior change) and hardware (infrastructure, sanitation) components.
• Engages with the capital WASH team, particularly the Environmental Health Advisor, to align field interventions with broader organizational strategies and best practices in public health WASH and environmental risk management.
• Coordinates with MEAL, Logistics, Finance, and HR to ensure environmental health activities are well-supported, monitored, and documented.

External:

• Represents Action Against Hunger in local WASH cluster meetings, government coordination forums, and technical working groups as required, advocating for integrated environmental and public health-focused WASH interventions.
• Collaborates with local authorities, RRS, UNHCR, and refugee leadership structures, and partner organizations to implement sustainable, community-led WASH interventions that address public health risks. Collaborate with camp-based NGOs to harmonize hygiene messaging and avoid duplication.
• Strengthens engagement with community-based structures (WASH committees, health extension workers, women’s groups, volunteers) to enhance hygiene promotion, behavior change, and environmental risk mitigation

Delivery (key performance indicators)

• Timely and high-quality implementation of environmental health interventions, including hygiene promotion, sanitation improvements, and behavior change initiatives. tailored to multi-ethnic refugee and host populations, considering language, cultural practices, and trauma sensitivity.
• Effective monitoring and reporting on key environmental health and public health WASH indicators, , including camp-specific WASH disease outbreak risks, ensuring compliance with donor and organizational standards and reporting requirements
• Strengthened coordination and community(refugee and host) engagement, demonstrated by increased participation, improved local partnerships, and the sustainability of WASH initiatives.
• Integration of environmental health approaches within nutrition, health, and food security programs, and IPC measures in camp health facilities and schools, promoting a holistic response to public health risks.
• Capacity building of project staff, community health workers, and WASH committees to enhance local ownership and sustainability of interventions.

Key responsibilities and objectives

Implementation & technical oversight

• Lead hygiene promotion, environmental health and risk assessments, and community mobilization to reduce public health risks
• Develop and implement behavior change strategies tailored to local contexts, addressing hygiene practices, sanitation, and disease prevention.
• Oversee the distribution, proper use, and impact monitoring of WASH NFIs
• Ensure the integration of gender-sensitive and inclusive WASH programming, prioritizing the needs of women, children, and vulnerable groups.
• Conduct water quality testing, sanitation assessments, and environmental health risk mapping, water safety planning to inform programming and policy recommendations.

Monitoring, reporting, accountability & learning

Coordination & stakeholder engagement

• Actively participate in WASH cluster coordination meetings at woreda, zonal, and regional levels as required
• Strengthen cross-sector collaboration with health, nutrition, agriculture and education actors to maximize WASH impact on public health outcomes
• Support local authorities, institutions and community-based structures (WASH committees, HEWs, health facilities schools) in developing and implementing sanitation improvement plans including WASH FIT

Capacity building & team support

• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to the community engagement facilitators and other WASH staff.
• Organize and facilitate training sessions on hygiene promotion, behavior change communication, and environmental health for community health workers and volunteers.
• Support local governance structures to improve sanitation, water management, disease outbreak and environmental health monitoring at the community level

Gender & equality commitments

• Promote equal participation of men and women in environmental health and WASH programming.
• Ensure that interventions are inclusive and address the needs of vulnerable groups, including people with disabilities and marginalized communities.
• Uphold Action Against Hunger’s policies on gender equality, safeguarding, and protection from exploitation and abuse.

Safeguarding Commitments

• Action Against Hunger has a zero tolerance to child safeguarding violation and SEA. Our selection process includes rigorous reference and background checks. Successful applicants will be expected to sign up and carry out their duties in accordance with our Child Safeguarding and PSEA policies.

Working conditions, travel, and environment

• Field-based role with frequent travel to project sites, community meetings, and coordination forums.
• May involve working in remote and insecure locations, requiring flexibility and resilience.
• Expected to deploy rapidly in response to emerging public health WASH needs during humanitarian crises.

Required qualifications & experience

• MSC or B.Sc. degree in Environmental Health, Water Supply Management, Hydraulic Engineering, Water Resource Engineering and any other related field from a recognized University
• 5 years for Bachelor and 3 years for Masters Holders relevant work experiences.
• Considerable experience in developing and adopting WASH related manuals, policy briefs, guidelines and work processes
• Demonstrated experience in managing a team/program/project in development or humanitarian context
• Has got operational capacity and experience in managing staff coming from diverse background
• Proven ability to work with partners at all levels
• Expected to be well versed with WASH programming, emotionally intelligent and stay calm under immense pressure/work deadline.
• Knowledge in matrix management and interdepartmental networking

Required skills & competencies

• Strong technical expertise in hygiene promotion, environmental health risk assessment, water safety planning, and sanitation improvement
• Experience working in refugee settings, preferably in Gambella or similar humanitarian contexts.
• Strong ability to design and implement culturally sensitive SBC approaches in multi-lingual environments.
• Experience in designing and implementing behavior change strategies using participatory and community-led approaches
• Knowledge of water quality testing, vector control, environmental sanitation, and emergency WASH responses
• Proven ability to coordinate with government, humanitarian actors, and local stakeholders
• Proficiency in data collection, analysis, and reporting tools relevant to WASH programming
• Fluency in English; knowledge of local languages is an advantage.
• Very good at computer skill- Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Power Point and e-mail) and use of SPSS and related software
• Strong critical thinking and proposal writing skills.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, cultural sensitivity, flexibility, ability to learn with new environment.