CEAPRED Vacancy for Inclusive Value Chain Development Manager
LOCATION: USAID Integrated Nutrition Activity Office, Kathmandu
REPORTS TO: Director of Food and Agriculture
BACKGROUND USAID
Integrated Nutrition activity is a new five-year USAID-funded activity in Nepal. The activity aims to reduce malnutrition among women, children, and adolescents in Nepal’s underserved and marginalized communities. The activity is implemented by Helen Keller International (HKI) in collaboration with Center for Environmental and Agricultural Policy Research, Extension and Development (CEAPRED), FHI 360, ENPHO, NTAG and Kaboom Social Impact Pvt. Ltd.
USAID Integrated Nutrition’s primary goal is to improve the nutrition status of women, adolescents, and children in Nepal’s underserved and marginalized communities. The activity will tackle direct and underlying determinants of malnutrition in Nepal while strengthening the national and local enabling environment to implement multisectoral nutrition programs through four synergistic intermediate results. Achievement of the purpose will be measured by improvements in indicators of nutrition status among women of reproductive age, adolescents, and children. This activity will be implemented in at least 45 districts across seven provinces.
POSITION DESCRIPTION:
The Inclusive Value Chain Development Manager will work under direct supervision of Director of Food and Agriculture and be responsible for design, intervention approaches and overseeing field implementation and ensuring the outcomes related to the increased agricultural income of marginalized communities contributing to improved diet. S/he will be reporting to Director, Food and Agriculture. S/he will work closely with Food System Advisor, nutrition and governance team leads, and supporting and guiding IR3 staff at provinces, districts and municipalities levels.
ESSENTIAL RESPONSIBILITIES:
The Inclusive Value Chain Development Manager will work closely with the Director, Food and Agriculture, and Food System Advisor, IR1, IR2 and IR4 leads, and provincial leads of the Activity to support GON in designing and developing the context-specific inclusive food supply chain and improved food environment strategies and plans aligned with the Food System Transformation Strategy and Agriculture Development Strategy (ADS) particularly to increase income of marginalized communities and women including small and medium enterprises. The focus encompasses engaging private sector entities at various levels along with fostering private sector-led extension services for increased and sustained local production of nutrient-rich Indigenous and other high-value commodities (plant, animal, poultry and fish source foods); increasing incomes to improve diets; and increasing year-round availability of and access to safe and nutrient-rich foods. S/he will also contribute to designing and aligning private sector partnership activities under IR1-Improved household nutrition practices; IR2- Improved quality and coverage of nutrition services for women, adolescents, and children; and IR4- Strengthened national and subnational government capacity for multi-sectoral nutrition programming.
The specific responsibilities are detailed below:
A. Technical
- Lead designing, and implementation of inclusive food value chain development interventions through market feasibility and private sector engagement assessment process.
- Ensure enhanced technical support and capacity building for local partner NGO staff, and private sector including frontline extension workers to link small women producers and marginalized communities with markets and private-sector services focused on resilient local food production system.
- Collaborate with and complement private sector engagement initiatives promoted by GON, USAID Feed the Future implementing partners and academic institutions (Provincial Agriculture Universities), and CTEVT to strengthen SMEs capacity to promote the most nutrient-rich locally available foods (including indigenous crops) and advance context-specific income generation opportunities for marginalized communities.
- Provide leadership in capacity building and networking of private sector entities at various levels particularly at the local level to foster private sector-led enterprise development, inclusive value chain, business literacy, and market opportunities contributing to the creation of affordable diets, improved dietary diversity, and food safety.
- Work with the Social Behavior Change Communication team to design, develop, and implement the SBCC approaches for creating awareness of healthy food demand and optimizing local diets.
- Facilitate the implementation of gender and social inclusivity while adopting economic empowerment approaches.
- Advocate for increased access to agricultural inputs/ technology grants, subsidies, insurance and financial resources and micro-credits for SMEs, marginalized communities, and women to scale up and strengthen their agribusinesses
- Support in establishing and strengthening coordination and linkage with relevant government, non-government and private agencies and other stakeholders at each level of program implementation in association with the Director, Food and Agriculture, and Activity team members at the provinces and districts.
- Monitor agribusiness programs promoted by local partner NGOs and private sectors, and attend coordination meetings for facilitation and guidance.
- Support preparation of monthly, quarterly, six monthly, annual and other assessment/evaluation l reports as requested by the monitoring unit, Director Food and Agriculture, DCOP, Programs and Food System Advisor.
- Participate in contributing to detailed implementation planning sessions as per need.
- Support the central and provincial teams during specific studies, field monitoring capacitybuilding and report generation.
- Lead designing, developing and promoting small agribusiness (on-farm and off-farm) and inclusive food value chain development related SBCC and training materials (print, audio/video, digital), contributing to achieve the “Intermediate Result 3.
- Lead to organize and conduct training on business literacy including agribusiness development plans, market system development and private sector engagement to government, non-government, private sector, and Activity staff.
- Support MERL (Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning) unit to enter relevant data into the M&E database and in conducting M&E surveys.
- Support proper collection, processing and documentation of data needed for monitoring and Activity planning and improvisation under IR3.
- Ensure a safe and equitable workplace, create opportunities, and offer support to women and those from disadvantaged groups.
- Undertake other related tasks assigned by the Director, Food and Agriculture, Food Systems Advisor and Activity Operation/Management Team.
Education: Master or equivalent university degree in agribusiness, agricultural marketing or agri-economics.
Required Experience: The ideal candidate will have the following experience:
- At least 5 years of demonstrated experience in designing, developing and promoting agribusinesses at different levels (national, sub-national and local).
- Demonstrated experience in the areas of food production diversification, dietary diversity, food processing, postharvest losses and income generation for the vulnerable communities and women.
- Experience working with the government agencies at different levels, LNGOs, CBOs and private sector and other relevant stakeholders.
- Experience monitoring activities and progress against project targets.
- Knowledge of private sector engagement and market system development for smallholder producers and SMEs in the project districts.
- Demonstrated understanding of the synergy between the programmatic, operational, and financial components of projects
- Demonstrable respect for all persons regardless of religion, ethnicity, class, or gender, with a high comfort level working in a diverse environment with a demonstrated commitment to high professional ethical standards.
- Well-established and practiced organizational and planning skills.
- Collaborative, flexible and solution-oriented.
- Computer literate with proficiency with software relevant to the job duties.
Language
- Excellent English language skills, both in written and spoken forms, complemented by strong interpersonal communication abilities.
- Fluency in Nepali.
Disclaimer: This position is contingent upon donor’s approval.
The eligible & interested candidates are requested to submit their application ‘Online’ in CEAPRED’s website www.ceapred.org.np (career page). The applicants are also requested to mention their preferred province that they would like to work in their application letter.
Application submitted online only will be considered for further processes. Please refer to our website for detailed JD/TOR of the position. The last date for submission of online application is 5:00 PM on Friday, 19 July, 2024. The organization reserves the right to reject any/all applications without assigning any reason whatsoever.
Click Here for TOR - Inclusive Value Chain Development Manager
