Nutrition and Agriculture Expert Consultant

Project: USAID Ethiopia Resilience Learning Activity (RLA)

Consultancy firm or individual Consultant: TBD

Level of Effort:

Dates: September 2023 – April 2024

Location: Ethiopia

Deadline: Aug 21, 2023

Background

LINC is a mission-driven small business headquartered in Washington, DC, dedicated to strengthening local actors and systems. At LINC, we believe that a practical approach to engaging committed, capable local actors increases international development effectiveness and sustainability. The recipient of USAID’s “Small Business of the Year” award in 2017, we are a team of reflective practitioners, passionate and energetic in our work, and committed to locally-led development. We have developed ground-breaking tools to map organizational networks, measure social capital, and leverage systems-based approaches to development. We partner with major universities, foundations, local NGOs and consulting firms, USAID, and FCDO among others. Our country experience spans Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe. For more information on LINC, please visit www.linclocal.org.

In Ethiopia, LINC is implementing the new five-year, USAID-funded Resilience Learning Activity (RLA). The activity supports USAID and its resilience partners with learning, collaboration, and research around resilience issues in Ethiopia. RLA serves as a “learning sidecar” to USAID/Ethiopia and its implementing partners, helping them to better understand what relief and development interventions can help make households, communities, and systems more resilient to increasingly persistent shocks and stresses. RLA provides support with learning processes and frameworks, development and consolidation of learning and research agendas, and support to resilience partners for adaptive management, results measurement, and the increased integration of systems thinking and rapid feedback into their respective toolboxes.

Consultancy Description

The Resilience Learning Activity (RLA) requires  consultant with technical expertise in nutrition, food security and agriculture. The consultant will facilitate and provide technical input into a Community of Practice (CoPr) that RLA is organizing to research the effectiveness and impact of “home gardens” a widely promoted livelihoods and nutritional strategy used by donors and NGOs in Ethiopia.  The ideal candidate for this position will have strong knowledge and understanding of the subject matter, demonstrated abilities to facilitate groups in learning processes, and be capable of providing direction and technical support to the CoPr. The Home Garden CoPr activity is planned to take place from September 2023 and will continue for several months into 2024.

The consultant will work closely with the RLA team in Ethiopia to support Home Garden CoPr in developing a Home Garden Research and learning activity plan and organizing and facilitating CoPr learning events together with the RLA team and CoPr members. The consultant also provides technical support in the field of Nutrition, Agriculture, and food security for the members of Home Garden CoPr. The consultant will professionally document each process of Home Garden CoPr activities such as event report, After Action Review summary, next steps and points, lessons learned, and so on.

Following the conclusion of the Home Garden CoPr activity, the consultant will prepare one generic report in addition to each event report. The consultant will hand over all knowledge products generated including presentation meeting notes, reports photos, and videos during the period of this contract.

Duties and responsibilities

Convening and Facilitating the Home -Garden Community of Practice for USAID Partners

●        Leads the organization of the Home Garden CoPrs. This includes participatory development of an action plan (including deliverables) for the home garden CoPr evidence generation and synthesis  to be carried out for several months building upon existing activities / workplans currently being implemented.

●        Assist the design and delivery of events by working closely with the RLA Collective Action Platform manager and Home Garden CoPr members to define the scope of the event and create agendas and participatory exercises.

●        Maintains the records of each facilitation event’s activities and develops a post-event summary.

●        Continuously brief the CoPr members and the Collective Action Platform manager on progress actively flagging potential issues and suggesting methods for remediation.

●        Address any issue that may arise during the process of Home Garden research activities in consultation with the RLA team.

Lead the learning activities for CoPrs including the design and implementation of the evidence generation and analysis for the CoPrs

●        Provide strategic leadership, setting priorities in designing and managing the Home Garden research implementation activities in collaboration with the RLA and CoPr team members.

●        Provide technical oversight for the research design, development of research tools, and implementation of home garden research activities in collaboration with CoPr team members and RLA to maintain a quality and consistent approach across all target areas and technical interventions.

●        Based on research findings and stakeholder consultations, coordinate with the home garden CoPr team and RLA technical team in developing evidence-based knowledge products and documenting all steps of the CoPr process.

●        Provide regular progress reports on the research and learning status of the Home Garden activities and more especially linked to the learning for adaptive management.

●        Design and apply other learning approaches such as field visits or synthesis of learning materials

Support the adaptive management for CoPrs

●        Facilitate Pause and Reflect sessions during mid and end of CoPr  implementation

●        Engage CoPrs in After-Action-Reviews to help them continuously learn and adapt

●        Produce relevant learning products, oriented to two audiences: 1) The research report for CoPr and USAID staff document successes and challenges; 2) A case study or process learning document oriented to the larger global community

●        Integrating adaptive management in its all support to help USAID and IPs apply adaptive management processes and integrate the recommendations from the research to their programming.

●        Lead the dissemination of lessons to wider stakeholders in collaboration with RLA team

Monitoring and measuring progress and effectiveness of the Home Garden CoPrs

●        Integrate a monitoring and evaluation process to track and report on the progress of CoPrs.

Deliverables

●        Comprehensive workplan for Home Garden CoPr

●        Facilitation of regular  in-person meetings for CoPrs with a well planned agenda and facilitation guides

●        Engaging and interactive tools prepared and executed for active audience participation.

●        Detailed research plan

●        Develop consolidate final research products

●        Final Home Garden research report and a case study/Learning Brief

●        MSc in Agriculture /Horticulture / Rural Development study /Nutrition and related field

●        Minimum of 10 years Experience in the fields of Nutrition, Agriculture, Rural Development, horticulture,  food security, conducting qualitative and quantitative research.

●        Excellent facilitation skills and experience in participatory approaches.

●        Familiarity and experience with current nutrition, Agriculture, and Food Security issues in Ethiopia, government processes, national policies, strategies, and action plans for nutrition

●        Demonstrated experience with organizing and facilitating sessions, as well as working with co-facilitators and subject matter experts.

●        Ability to understand the needs of the participants and adapt quickly.

●        Excellent communication skills including verbal, presentation, and written.

●        Effective team working skills.

●        Excellent command of English, both spoken and written is required.