Emergency Health and Nutrition Advisor

This position is Contingent

About Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps is a leading global organization powered by the belief that a better world is possible.
In disaster, in hardship, in more than 40 countries around the world, we partner to put bold solutions into action — helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger communities from within.  Now, and for the future. We help people overcome poverty and conflict. Working with communities, we leverage local logic to help people transform their lives. To grow more food, earn higher incomes and ultimately advocate for their needs. We see global challenges as an invitation to pioneer innovative, sustainable solutions. During our 34-year history, our work has improved more than 170 million lives in more than 115 countries around the world. Mercy Corps Ethiopia invites motivated and qualified candidates to apply for the following vacant position.

Position Title:  Emergency Health and Nutrition Advisor

Duty Station:  Addis Ababa

Open Position:  One

POSITION SUMMARY:

Under the guidance of the humanitarian response team lead the Emergency health and nutrition advisor will be responsible to provide technical support for the project coordinators and other frontline health and nutrition staffs. The position holder will also be responsible to closely work with UN agencies, health and nutrition clusters for effective coordination and secure program supplies expected from WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA and WFP. Management responsibilities include supervising project coordinators and health and nutrition teams , technical support and close follow up of  the nutrition and health intervention and Liaises with other technical advisors to ensure program quality.  The position holder will be responsible to represent MC at national and regional level health and nutrition cluster coordination and support the project coordinators to represent MC at zonal and woreda level coordination. In addition, he/she be responsible for monitoring health and nutrition  activities, reporting, establishing and strengthening stakeholder relationships at all MC implementation areas. To ensure high quality and efficient technical assistance, the  health and nutrition advisor will support the coordinators in managing workloads among team members and ensuring health and nutrition staff are working based on their job description . The emergency  health and nutrition advisor  will coordinate and liaise with emergency team lead to facilitate the program supply procurement, hiring health and nutrition staff and other logistic support required for the program and to ensure smooth coordination internally. The position holder will also provide technical assistance for MC’s humanitarian responses, support new business development, ensuring/supporting program teams to work in line with the nationally endorsed guidelines, developing tools, checklists and standard operation procedures, designing and managing training and other capacity strengthening efforts.

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS:

Main responsibility:

• Manage Mercy Corps Emergency Nutrition and Health response and provide technical support for the field teams
• Establish and maintain systems for work planning, implementation of activities, monitoring progress, reporting and capacity building. Designing systems to support high quality performance and results, efficient time and resource allocation, feasible workloads assignment among team members and setting timeframes, motivating team members and ensuring accountability.
• Ensuring some protection and GBV related services mainstreamed in all health and nutrition responses and follow up with the field team to make sure MC programs are providing gender sensitive humanitarian services and MC program participants are safe and protected in collaboration with country gender advisor
• Coordinate and Work with other team members in new proposal development  for emergency projects, developing technical guides, tools, checklists and SOPs,  designing and managing training and other capacity building efforts
• Work closely with the emergency team lead and other technical advisors to ensure timely and high-quality emergency responses. Coaching health and nutrition teams to improve their technical skills for improved  health and nutrition services quality.
• Manage the flow of tasks and assigning responsibilities among team members and Harmonizing different activities to ensure successful integration of the  health and nutrition components with other subsectors
• Preparing implementation plan together with the project coordinators, health and nutrition teams and follow up of the progress based on the agreed plan.
• Coordinate and liaise with Mercy corps support staffs at head office and field offices for smooth coordination and facilitation of program material procurement, transportation, hiring staffs and other logistic support required at the field level.
• Strengthening government relationship and Liaise with different sector bureaus directly involved in emergency health and nutrition response mainly with DRMC, FMOH at federal regional, for a better coordination and smooth partnership through joint planning, sharing progress updates and creating regular communications.
• Establish effective collaboration with UN agencies and other cooperating partners to facilitate the exchange of humanitarian information and secure health and nutrition supplies from respective UN agencies by share the forecast and timely requesting.
•  Conducting regular monitoring and technical support to ensure MC’s health and nutrition services are line with the national standards.
• Provide technical inputs to other  technical advisors to make sure other sectors contributes for improving nutrition status of the most vulnerable groups
• Design, field test and produce CMAM tools for assessment, program design, planning, capacity building, monitoring, reporting and evaluation. Tools may include training materials, manuals, guidelines, job aids, and other tools.
• Design and implement context-specific capacity-strengthening for the local government in collaboration with regional and Zonal authorities and other concerned agencies document and disseminate evidence on successes stories, performance, impact and lessons learned. Support mechanisms for continued sharing of information for local stakeholders at field level.
• Review written products prepared by field teams and other members of the cluster and provide comments, written input to improve the quality of the products.
• Facilitate sharing of lessons and new approaches across different teams, and strengthen the capacity of team members through ongoing feedbacks and inspiring for higher results.
• In collaboration with the emergency team lead, respond to requests from Donor for information on project progress, any changes from the plan, challenges and actions taken to make progress towards the goal of the project.
•  Participate in meetings and workshops at national level with government, donors and other agencies and follow up on the field team to participate in all coordination forums at Zonal and woreda level and share MC’s achievements and approaches.
• Contribute to the development of project-wide work plan and reports.
• Communicate regularly and collaborate with other MC development project teams to ensure successful integration of the humanitarian nexus development activities.
• Share key information and updates for emergency team lead and humanitarian directors  for high-level decisions.
• Carry out other jobs-assigned by supervisor to support the MC missions.

Education:

• BSC in public health, nursing and other health sciences plus Masters in Public Health or nutrition

Organizational Learning:  As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities they serve – we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.

KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE:

·        More than eight  year(s) of relevant experience on emergency health, nutrition and WASH responses

• Experience in managing diverse program teams preferable in pastoralist areas
• Experience in program management or provision of technical assistance to programs team with frequent field travel
• Knowledge and experience in humanitarian response particularly in pastoralist community
• Experience in  implementing diverse donor programs is preferred.
• Experience working with ministry of health and knowledge of health systems required.
• Ability to manage and work in a team consisting of people with different technical backgrounds and varying levels of technical training.
• Ability to facilitate relationships and interact smoothly and effectively with clients, colleagues, and partners including donors, national governments, sub-recipients, and peer organizations
• Ability to adopt  materials into context specific and cultural friendly tools to use for MC’s program implementation
• Ability to undertake problem analyses and organize diverse information in a systematic way while thinking creatively to propose approaches to improve program design, implementation and results reporting.
• Strong analytical ability is essential.
• Superior writing skills and oral presentation skills.
• English fluency is essential.