Senior Livelihood Program Officer

Ainaro, USD $810 per month

The Senior Livelihoods Program Officer position will provide technical leadership for work with rural Farmer Groups to increase the supply of nutritious food to schools and other markets. HATUTAN seeks to improve the productivity, inclusiveness, and profitability of local farmers’ nutritious products such as animal or plant protein sources including legumes and beans/ pulses and other horticultural products to supply the national School Feeding Program. That involves working with Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLA) members in Ainaro, through a Farmer Field Business School (FFBS) approach to increase the quantity and quality of yields; promote better household and in-school nutrition; promote women’s empowerment and gender equality; provide access to basic financial literacy; collective marketing; and facilitate marketing connections with schools. This position is based in Ainaro with travel to Dili and other program sites.

MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES:

Lead planning, organizing and implementation of Livelihoods (VSLA and Farmer Field Business School - FFBS)

• Develop annual work plans and budget for livelihood field activities.

Integrate gender analysis in planning and budget allocation for both gender specific and integrated activities.

• Develop plan for staff capacity strengthening on the VSLA and FFBS approach and its implementation.
• Train staff and any local NGO partners on the VSLA and FFBS approach and conduct Training of Trainers (ToT) for program staff.
• Integrate gender analysis in the livelihoods approach identifying any barriers for women farmers to fully access and apply the training.
• Facilitate formation and training of FFBS to build farmers’ capacities to test and adapt new ideas and technologies around sustainable nutrition and climate smart agricultural production.
• Implement activities according to the approved plan and take timely corrective actions to continually improve impact.
• Translate all training and technical information and materials in clear language for easy understanding by the target communities and facilitate delivery of information in the relevant local languages
• Support Farmers’ Groups to form Producer and Marketing Groups or cooperatives, linking them to schools and connecting them to government services to unlock access to new markets, capital for expanding production and training opportunities.
• Coordinate with other team members from the HATUTAN staff in the implementation of agriculture and saving and loans activities.

Develop agriculture value chains for rural communities

• Work with Municipal Authorities in Food Security, Agriculture and School Feeding and other stakeholders to identify market gaps of nutritious foods useful for school feeding programs and other market opportunities for local farmers.
• Identify agriculture value chain production and business opportunities for rural farmers particularly women. Identify innovations to help small-scale produces; especially women, to improve yield and income.
• Provide technical support to partners and communities to prevent or reduce the negative  impact of climate change and community organizational development to the various identified agriculture value chains.
• Lead field staff to review methods and community plans on value chain promotion.
• Work closely with the HATUTAN education team to train teachers and PTA members in school garden options, building upon the ME curriculum guidance and HATUTAN’s previous training. School gardens could serve as demonstration sites for nutrition-sensitive and climate-sensitive agricultural strategies, techniques and technologies.
• Guide teachers to actively involve boys and girls (in their respective diversities) in the school garden activities.
• Support the production and processing of high nutrient foods to be sold to schools, specifically vitamin A-rich orange-fleshed sweet potato, spinach, iron rich legumes and greens, and eggs to improve protein consumption.
• Conduct gendered value chain assessments to identify and address gender-based constraints at the different points of the value chain opportunities.
• Facilitate farmers’ access to services, information and training, through exchanges, open days, workshops, and other events.
• Guide community members and individual families to determine their own sustainable development.
• Promote sustainable farming methods (permanent farm) to eliminate the harmful practice of slash and burn.
• Facilitate processes for the development and implementation of conservation agriculture methodologies and systems and other sustainable climate change adaptation practice.

Monitoring and Learning

• Provide technical input for monitoring VSLA and FFBS implementation including identifying key indicators and development of monitoring tools.
• Participate and contribute in reflective learning spaces such as review meetings, workshops and other learning events internally and externally with program initiative stakeholders.
• Participate in monitoring progress and identify any gender barriers to participation and benefits.

Knowledge Management

• Document achievements, lessons learned, promising practices, including human-interest stories.
• Produce materials for the field staff to show households that are successful in promoting equitable household decision-making and power.
• Contribute to internal and external knowledge development, ensuring that lessons learned  are shared and applied in daily practice.
• Participate and share the livelihoods component outcomes and achievements in with staff,  partners and external networks.

Staff Management

• Supervise the AInaro Livelihoods Team’s Program Officers and provide mentorship as a technical expert in VSLA and FFBS.
• Coach and mentor the Program Officers (POs) and other staff both for effective implementation VSAL and FFBS.
• Hold regular staff reflection sessions together with Livelihood POs.
• Assist Livelihood POs to review monitoring observations and use the monitoring and reporting data to identify gaps in implementation or understanding of the model and regularly make quality improvements to our implementation.

OTHER RESPONSIBILITIES

• Take on other duties as assigned by supervisor.
• Engage in emergency preparedness and assist in any emergency response as required.
• Promote a safe and secure work environment; foster a culture of safety and security awareness and consistently follow all CARE safety and security policies, procedures and directives.
• Demonstrate an ongoing commitment to gender equality, diversity and child protection.

For more information about this position, visit this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SExWITeqCv7BuLo7jB6XjUoE8HGw0DW8/view?usp=sharing

1. Selection criteria

EXPERIENCE AND QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree in disciplines such as agriculture, natural resource management and related fields or secondary level with a minimum of 5 years of work experience in the field of livelihood and market development activities etc.
• At least 3 years of work experience in supporting building capacity of partners in livelihood and business orientation with a minimum of 2 year working in a supervisory role.
• Excellent knowledge and experience in VSLA and establishing market linkages across a variety  of value chains.
• Understanding of nutrition sensitive agriculture production methodologies.
• Strong understanding of water and climate smart agriculture and irrigation using the watershed approach or other tailored strategies appropriate for the location.
• Strong networking skills to collaborate with municipal and local level structures (suco extension workers).
• Strong negotiation, facilitation and influencing skills especially with local communities and Municipal level structures.
• Knowledge or understanding of social, economic, and political context governing  agriculture and irrigation policy issues in Timor-Leste.
• Good knowledge of participatory tools e.g. participatory rural appraisal (PRA), and the school feeding program.
• Understanding of potential gender barriers in agribusiness.
• Understanding of the government agricultural development policies and strategic plans.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in Tetum and Intermediate level English.
• Strong numeracy skills.
• Very good working knowledge of common office software packages i.e., word  processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software.

1. How to apply

Interested applicants should send a CV (no longer than four pages) and cover letter via email to [email protected] OR to the Human Resource unit at CARE office at Bairo Pite, Dili.

CARE is an equal-opportunity employer committed to a diverse workplace. Women are strongly encouraged to apply.

CARE Timor-Leste is committed to protecting the rights of children in all areas we work. CARE Timor-Leste reserves the right to conduct screening procedures to ensure a child-safe environment.