Agriculture livelihood Advisor – Save the Children

GRADE: 1B

Post Type: National

Project Overview

Growth through Nutrition is a six-year multi-sector nutrition and Water, Hygiene and Sanitation (WASH) project in Ethiopia (2016-2022). Save the Children in partnership with its government sectoral partners, International NGOs and local NGOs drives the implementation of Growth through Nutrition using a powerful, multi-sector platform comprised of evidence-based nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions. 

The purpose of the USAID Growth through Nutrition activity is to improve the nutritional status of women and young children with a focus on the first 1,000 days from pregnancy to a child’s second birthday—the critical window of opportunity for a child’s growth and development and through adolescent nutrition interventions. It is being implemented in 120 predominantly Agricultural Growth Program (AGP), around 80%, and remaining PSNP/food insecure woredas in the in USAID/Ethiopia’s Feed the Future Zone of Influence of Amhara, Oromia, Sidama, SNNP and Tigray regions. The project aims to ensure sustained access to diverse, safe, and quality foods along with adoption of optimal nutrition, WASH, and agriculture behaviours, utilization of quality nutrition services and increased access to WASH products and services. It targets strengthening multi-sector coordination and GOE capacity to implement effective nutrition programs across sectors and upholds four essential cross-cutting elements, namely; gender equality and women’s empowerment, a rigorous learning agenda, sustainable approaches, and convergence and layering with other of multi-sector nutrition and interventions in the same geographic areas.

During the remaining period of the project the Advisor will play a pivotal role in finalizing and documenting the implementation of technically sound project interventions. Agriculture/livelihood interventions of the project specifically aim to increase household production of nutritious and diverse foods; increase availability and affordability of nutritious foods in the markets; improve technologies for food storage, preservation, and processing; influence household production and consumption practices, and increase assets and steady income for vulnerable households. Building on what is already achieved by the sub-prime partner, Land O’ Lakes in the past five years, what other Feed the Future partners are working on and routine and supported NSA related activities of the GoE, the role holder will play major roles of technical leadership and representation of the project in all agriculture/livelihood related platforms, coordinating with other thematic project staff for integrated reach to target households, and engaging actively in timely reporting, documenting and sharing lessons in technical platforms  and final close-out events.

Reports to: DCOP Programs

Staff Directly Reporting to this Post: Agriculture and Livelihood Specialist at CO (TBD)

Other Functional relationship:  

• Regional Agriculture / Livelihood Managers

Technical Leadership and External Representation

• Provide technical support through coaching and mentoring and virtual technical sessions to field office staff to enable them tracking diffusion of NSA interventions within the community at large
• Coordinates with Growth through Nutrition advisors and seconded staff to ensure that nutrition sensitive approaches are implemented in an integrated manner.
• Responsible for budget utilization for the national level ag/livelihoods activities, and oversees timely and efficient implementation of activities at FO level
• Leads integration of relevant agriculture related activities with other project thematic areas including health, social behaviour change communications, WaSH interventions and pre-service education
• Continues support for implementation of cross-cutting activities: gender equality and women’s empowerment related activities, a rigorous learning agenda, sustainable approaches, and convergence/overlay of multi-sector nutrition interventions in the same geographic areas.
• Represents growth through Growth through Nutrition in technical working groups and taskforces that work the agriculture sector at national level
• Actively monitors ongoing livelihood interventions directly implemented by selected woredas through project’s grant-under-grant mechanism and technically contributes to livelihood related emergency responses (crisis modifier) in project intervention regions
• Coordinating joint field monitoring reviews with stakeholders using existing platforms and project’s close-out events so as to smoothly hand-over project’s activities to the sector.

Technical Staff Capacity and Management:

• Provides technical leadership to agriculture/livelihood staff at regional and zonal levels, including through regular supportive field-based technical assistance. 
• Conducts at least 2 one-to-ones virtual monitoring meeting per month with regional thematic managers to identify priority areas and document follow-up actions
• Build capacities of regional team on capturing lessons from livelihood interventions
• Provides technical oversight of the work of on NSA and provide technical support to regional teams for their implementation as per the technical guideline.
• Work with Save the Children’s Program Development and Quality team to plan technical support needs for project’s livelihood activities on ongoing basis.

Documentation, Dissemination and Reporting:

• Ensuring quality and timely submission of monthly, quarterly and annual nutrition reports and other deliverables to Country office related to IR1 and IR 5(MOA support).     
• Leads documentation and dissemination of thematic learnings within and outside the project  
• Coordinates operation research in areas of assessing effectiveness of Modelling approach for NSA diffusion and capacity of saving groups
• Works closely with the monitoring & evaluation advisor to ensure progress is being achieved towards ag/livelihoods targets and quality benchmarks are met.
• Support regional nutrition mangers and zonal coordinators in identification and reporting of success stories, lessons learning in nutrition programing.
• Ensuring that all project national level ag/livelihoods documents, data, and other information required for reporting interventions are prepared and submitted on time and in compliance with donor requirements
• Document and share program learnings by finalizing ongoing technical and advocacy briefs  
• Perform any other activities based on line manager’s assignment

Accountability:

• Holds self-accountable for making decisions, managing resources efficiently, achieving and role modelling Save the Children values
• Holds suppliers accountable to deliver on their responsibilities

Ambition:

• Sets ambitious and challenging goals for themselves and takes responsibility for their own personal development
• Widely shares their personal vision for Save the Children, engages and motivates others
• Future orientated, thinks strategically and on a global scale

Collaboration:

• Approachable, good listener, easy to talk to; builds and maintains effective relationships with colleagues, Members and external partners and supporters
• Values diversity and different people’s perspectives, able to work cross-culturally.

Creativity:

• Develops and encourages new and innovative solutions
• Cuts away bureaucracy and encourages an entrepreneurial approach

Integrity:

• Honest, encourages openness and transparency, builds trust and confidence
• Displays consistent excellent judgement

QUALIFICATION

• Bachelor’s Degree or preferably Advanced degree in a related field of study such as agriculture, food security, food science, and/or food technology.

EXPERIENCE

• Minimum of 10 years of experience in developing and managing agriculture and livelihood programs in rural settings, preferably with nutrition component and in a multisectoral context.

KNOWLEDGE SKILLS AND ABILITY

• In-depth understanding of agriculture value chains (including livestock) as well as food storage, preservation, processing, safety and the role of agriculture sector in improving nutrition.
• Significant expertise in providing technical assistance to project/host country government staff working on agriculture, livelihood, and/or food processing activities.
• Experience in dairy and/or poultry, fruit, legume, vegetable and tree crop production and processing, and/or food microbiology is a plus.
• Familiarity with GoE Nutrition Sensitive Agriculture approaches and priorities and experience working with GoE system preferred.
• Excellent interpersonal skills and demonstrated ability to lead and work effectively in team situations.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.

COMPETENCIES

SC Values are: Accountability, Ambition, Collaboration, Creativity and Integrity. Aligned with this,

• Leading:  Leads and Inspires Others and Developing Self and Others
• Thinking: Develops and implement innovative solutions to adapt and succeed in an ever-changing uncertain work and global environment
• Engaging:  Builds and use sustainable relationship to support the work of Save the Children