The World Food Programme is the food assistance branch of the United Nations and the world’s largest humanitarian organization addressing hunger and promoting food security.

THE ROLE

This position will support the implementation of WFP’s food assistance programmes in Dadaab refugee hosting area while contributing to the refugee-host communities transition agenda. Responsibilities include technical work of the planning, implementation and coordination of project specific activities that require thorough understanding of Programme/project context, issues, and ability to apply a range of guidelines/practices.

This position is based in Dadaab and reports to Head of Programmes.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (not all-inclusive, nor exhaustive)

Under the direct supervision of Head of Programmes, and overall supervision of the Head of Area Office East, the Programme Associate is responsible for the following duties:

• Provide technical support and assist in the development and implementation of various food assistance and resilience activities and processes. The food assistance activities will include among others, in-kind food distribution, cash-based transfers, school meals and nutrition interventions while resilience building actions will include, among others, productive livelihood asset creation, harvest and post-harvest handling and management, market access and financial inclusion. Implementation of these activities will support alignment with wider Programme policies and guidelines while ensuring that deadlines and targets are met.
• Provide specialized project management support to food and nutrition assistance and resilience programmes to ensure that the various activities are performed within the established targets following WFP’s policies and procedures.
• Contribute to effective discussions on refugee transition agenda including roll out of differentiated assistance approaches.
• Prepare a range of food assistance and resilience building project reports and data analysis and highlight trends/issues ensuring deliverables adhere to corporate standards and quality control.
• Support the capacity building of WFP staff, cooperating partners and stakeholders on food, nutrition assistance as well resilience programming in the within Dadaab.
• Oversee and/or review the work of camp of settlement-based staff members, providing practical advice and guidance, to contribute to delivering objectives to agreed standards and deadlines.
• Ensure that data and information on food system projects presented to the stakeholders is accurate, consistent, and aligned with WFP’s communication protocol.
• Undertake any other duty as assigned by the Head of Programme or Head of Area Office.

DELIVERABLES

• Effectively follows implementation of the project activities and outputs to ensure that deliverables are met on time.
• Provides technical support to ensure quality work.
• Communicates clearly and effectively with on the ground stakeholders and internal WFP colleagues.

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE

Education: A university degree in Agriculture Education and Extension, Agriculture Agribusiness, Agronomy, Food Nutrition and Dietetics, Community and Rural development, Sociology, Economics, Food Security, Animal Science/ Animal Production, Range Management, or other field relevant to international development assistance.

Experience: A minimum of 6 years progressive work experience in food nutrition, food security/ agriculture/ environment and market systems development.

Knowledge and Skills

• Experience in implementing community-based food and nutrition and livelihood projects in both refugees and non-refugees set ups.
• Conversant with participatory community engagement approaches such as participatory rural appraisal, participatory learning and action, community managed disaster risk reduction.
• Deep understanding of project cycle management (PCM) including design, planning, implementation, monitoring and adaptation.
• Has a deep understanding on how to monitor technical activities related to food and nutrition assistance, market system functionality and resilience building initiatives.
• Broader understanding of cross cutting issues in humanitarian and development programming such as conflict sensitive programming, nutrition sensitive programming and gender and youth sensitive programming.
• Experience working with organizations that have medium to large food and nutrition assistance/ security, livelihoods, and agriculture portfolio and longer-term projects.

Language: Fluency in both oral and written communication in English is required