🇸🇱 Job Vacancy @ World Food Programme (WFP) – School Feeding Associate

WFP celebrates and embraces diversity. It is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all its employees and encourages qualified candidates to apply irrespective of race, colour, national origin, ethnic or social background, genetic information, gender, gender identity and/or expression, sexual orientation, religion or belief, HIV status or disability.

ABOUT WFP

The United Nations World Food Programme is the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. The mission of WFP is to help the world achieve Zero Hunger in our lifetimes. Every day, WFP works worldwide to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry and that the poorest and most vulnerable, particularly women and children, can access the nutritious food they need.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has been present in Sierra Leone since 1968. It supports the Government through a range of integrated life-saving and resilience-building activities.

One of the activities is serving as a key implementing partner of the National School Feeding Programme, under the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education (MBSSE). School Feeding programmes are used in many countries to incentivize education, improve health outcomes and serve as a social protection mechanism. WFP provides daily school feeding in 5 districts across the country, covering over 1,000 schools and approximately 240,000 beneficiaries. To expand the benefits associated with school feeding, in select schools, WFP is undertaking a Home-Grown School Feeding approach, based on local procurement from smallholder farmers.

In October 2023, WFP received multi-year funding from BMZ to accelerate school meals and support the transformation of food systems and community resilience in Karene district. This includes converting all 115 schools in Karene to Home-Grown School Feeding modality (currently only 5 schools are on this modality), with increased local procurement of existing commodities in the food basket, as well as the addition of fresh commodities. The schools will receive a package of interventions including infrastructural support, capacity strengthening and SBCC.

ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT

Under the direct supervision of the Head of Sub-Office and overall guidance of Head of School Feeding, the incumbent will ensure effective and quality implementation of Home-Grown School Feeding in WFP-assisted schools in Karene district, specifically through the following activities: KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (not all-inclusive)

Programme Implementation

•  Provide overall project management support to the school feeding programme to ensure various activities are performed within the established targets, implementation guidelines and SoPs.
•  Regularly monitor, update and track data related to school feeding programme issues, commodity pipelines, follow the timely delivery of commodities and distributions to ensure effective implementation of the programme.
•  Provide intensive support to districts and schools in preparing plans, project implementation, facilitating food procurement process and ensure the delivery of food commodities and provision of Non-Food Items on time.
•  Coach and support School Management Committees (SMCs), head teachers and community members to ensure the cash transferred to HGSF is being utilized for the intended purpose as per the agreed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and SOPs.
•  Prepare and compile detailed monthly and quarterly school feeding reports describing project activities, disaggregated by age and gender, and ensure timely submission to WFP SO and CO school feeding unit.
•  Ensure community participation in all school feeding activities to assure local ownership.
•  Undertake data entry into COMET in a timely manner.

Troubleshooting and Capacity Strengthening

•  Act as a point of contact for resolution of a range of operational queries and problems related to school feeding within the geographic area of responsibility.
•  Escalate issues for resolution to SO, CO or the district level authorities for timely corrective action.
•  Identify HGSF capacity gaps in the operational area and facilitate training sessions and knowledge management.

Coordination and Collaboration

•  Serve as the focal point for strengthening district level coordination with cooperating partners, government counterparts, delivery partners, other school feeding and complementary partners.
•  Identify at the district level, areas of collaboration and synergies with other actors for more effective HGSF programming.
•  Work in close collaboration with WFP’s Asset Creation and other local actors to enhance the capacity of smallholder farmers to produce and supply nutritious and quality fresh foods (fresh vegetables, Orange-Fleshed Sweet Potato) to HGSF.

Monitoring and Evaluation

•  Periodically collect and analyze data related to HGSF programming through field visits and identify challenges and resolution mechanisms, either immediate, short or long term.
•  Facilitate and proactively lead internal school feeding programme monitoring in collaboration with government counterparts, and support donor visits.
•  Perform additional duties, as required by the supervisor.

STANDARD MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

Education Undergraduate degree in social sciences, education, development economics or relevant field

Experience At least five years of relevant professional experience in programme design and implementation in School Feeding and/or cash-based activities or local procurement components

4Ps CORE ORGANISATIONAL CAPABILITIES

Purpose

•  Understand and communicate the Strategic Objectives: Coaches team in the most effective ways to communicate WFP’s Strategic Objectives to WFP team and partners in the field.
•  Be a force for positive change: Implements new methods or tools to improve team’s work processes and productivity.
•  Make the mission inspiring to our team: Maps team’s activities and tasks to specific successes in beneficiary communities to showcase positive impact.
•  Make our mission visible in everyday actions: Explains to teammates how each unit contributes to the overall WFP mission.

People

•  Look for ways to strengthen people's skills: Identifies skill development opportunities such as training modules or on-the-job experiences for self, colleagues and direct reports.
•  Create an inclusive culture: Facilitates team building activities to build rapport in own unit.
•  Be a coach & provide constructive feedback: Facilitates the pairing of junior colleagues with coaches within own team.
•  Create an “I will”/”We will” spirit: Proactively anticipates potential challenges and develops mitigation plans to ensure that team meets goals and targets.

Performance

•  Encourage innovation & creative solutions: Identifies opportunities to be creative in own work and to help team be more innovative and accurate in their respective tasks and areas of work.
•  Focus on getting results: Monitors team’s deliverables and provides feedback to ensure outcomes are delivered consistently and accurately.
•  Make commitments and make good on commitments: Provides accurate guidance to team on expected responsibilities and tasks, whilst also upholding own commitment to the team.
•  Be Decisive: Sets an example and provides guidance to junior team members on when to escalate issues when faced with challenging issues in the workplace or in the field.

Partnership

•  Connect and share across WFP units: Facilitates partnerships with other WFP units to accomplish missions in the field.
•  Build strong external partnerships: Sets an example and provides guidance to team on how to build relationships with external partners.
•  Be politically agile & adaptable: Articulates to colleagues or direct reports the value of contributing to other WFP teams and agency partnerships in fulfilling WFP’s goals and objectives.
•  Be clear about the value WFP brings to partnerships: Organizes, monitors, and prioritizes own and team’s efforts to ensure that they will fulfil the needs of internal and external partners.

FUNCTIONAL CAPABILITIES

Capability Name

Description of the behaviour expected for the proficiency level

Programme Lifecycle & Food Assistance

Demonstrates ability to identify key variables and contextual factors that affect food assistance problems and programmes throughout the lifecycle to inform quality programme design or re-design.

Transfer Modalities (Food, Cash, Vouchers)

Demonstrates ability to implement, under guidance, food assistance programmes deploying the full range of transfer modalities with an understanding of basic principles guiding modality selection and implementation.

Broad Knowledge of Specialized Areas

Understands basic technical concepts and data and their relevance to food assistance programmes.

Emergency Programming

Displays capacity to provide inputs into the development, implementation and realignment of high quality emergency programmes.

Strategic Policy Engagement w/Government

Understands and applies basic principles of engagement with government counterparts at the national or local level.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Position open to Sierra Leone Nationals only

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

Qualified female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.

WFP offers a competitive compensation package which will be determined by the contract type and selected candidate’s qualifications and experience.

Please visit the following websites for detailed information on working with WFP.

http://www.wfp.org Click on: “Our work” and “Countries” to learn more about WFP’s operations.

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS

19th November 2023

WFP has a zero-tolerance approach to conduct such as fraud, sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to WFP’s standards of conduct and will therefore undergo rigorous background verification internally or through third parties. Selected candidates will also be required to provide additional information as part of the verification exercise. Misrepresentation of information provided during the recruitment process may lead to disqualification or termination of employment

WFP will not request payment at any stage of the recruitment process including at the offer stage. Any requests for payment should be refused and reported to local law enforcement authorities for appropriate action.