WFP seeks to recruit Programme Policy Officer SC8 – Kuajok, Sudan
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.
WFP’s South Sudan operation aims to provide assistance to over 5 million food insecure people in 2019.
WFP is seeking technical leaders and managers: people who can demonstrate that they possess the right mix of qualifications, skills and experience to drive WFP programmes to a higher level of effectiveness with consideration to the populations we serve. Qualified female candidates are especially encouraged to apply.
Organizational context :
Based in the Kuajok Field Office, the Programme Policy Officer for resilience building and food assistance for assets is expected to carry out technical work with an appropriate degree of independence towards ensuring that objectives of the project are fully realized. This would require alignment of actions to WFP corporate and country office policies, with a view to complementarity with sub-national government policies and priorities, involving analytical skills and working with respective partners and stakeholders. The Programme Policy Officer is expected to contribute to programme performance improvement both internally and externally in the relevant technical area. The position requires close working relations with cooperating partners (CPs) and various government institutions.
Job purpose :
The Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) from January 2019 found that 6.17 million people in South Sudan were facing severe acute food insecurity, with the situation projected to worsen to include 6.87 million people by the peak of the lean season in May-July 2019. An estimated 860,000 children under 5 years of age are projected to be acutely malnourished in 2019. Against these alarming projections, WFP’s field offices (FO) are the frontline of providing assistance to a growing number of food and nutrition insecure communities across South Sudan.
Increasingly, WFP South Sudan seeks to shift away from unconditional food assistance programmes towards more livelihoods and resilience based conditional food assistance interventions. To do so, WFP continues to expand its Safety Nets and Resilience (SN&R) programmes throughout the country – including School Meals (SM), Food Assistance for Assets (FFA) and Smallholder Agricultural Market Support (SAMS).
Under the supervision of the FO Programme Unit management, the Programme Policy Officer will provide technical leadership for resilience building and food assistance for assets activities at the Field Office, liaise with the relevant government institutions, cooperating partners and other stakeholders in the sector towards achieving outlined objectives that contribute towards saving and changing the lives of affected food insecure communities.
Key accountabilities (not all-inclusive) :
- Provide technical expertise, efficient coordination and specialized project management support in the planning and implementation of resilience building and food assistance for assets activities in the field office, including necessary guidance and technical backstopping to ensure efficient implementation of project activities in alignment with wider WFP programme policies and guidelines ;
- Contribute to the development of tools and methodologies, define plans and processes in line with the Operational Plan, WFP policies and wider government strategies, rules and regulations to support effective implementation ;
- Ensure integration of nutrition sensitivity and enhanced gender mainstreaming within FFA activities, through linkages with other units and partners ;
- Within the specific area of responsibility, prepare a variety of elaborated reports and substantial data analysis (e.g. food assistance needs, resource utilization, programme status, performance) and make recommendations to supervisors, ensuring deliverables adhere to corporate standards and quality control ;
- Plan and coordinate capacity support to address the needs in all dimensions (people, organization and institution/systems), towards ensuring effective implementation, with a particular focus on ensuring CP oversight and adherence to field-level agreement commitments ;
- Oversee the activity related commodity movements such as food deliveries, storage, transport and distribution at the site ;
- Participate in sector assessments and collection of evidence to strengthen food assistance programming.
- Liaise with partners and UN agencies for joint advocacy, awareness raising and support to the subnational Government in the areas of food and nutrition security ;
- Plan and coordinate capacity support to address the needs in all dimensions (people, organization and institution/systems), towards ensuring effective implementation, with a particular focus on ensuring CP oversight and adherence to fieldlevel agreement commitments ;
- Oversee the activity related commodity movements such as food deliveries, storage, transport and distribution at the site ;
- Support the formation and activities of a state level Resilience Platform with local authorities, other UN agencies, and other partners to enhance the local capacity to oversee, monitor, and guide activities that contribute to improve resilience and food security ;
- Mentor and guide activity teams, acting as a point of reference assisting them with analyses and queries ;
- Provide technical training to field office monitoring staff in the relevant activities to ensure they are able to sufficiently monitor and assess the quality of activity implementation in the field, and activity utilize monitoring data gathered to improve programming ;
- Perform other tasks as directed by HoP/HoFO.
4Ps core organisational capabilities :
Purpose :
- Understand and communicate the Strategic Objectives: Understands WFP’s Strategic Objectives and the link to own work objectives ;
- Be a force for positive change: Flexibly adapts individual contributions to accommodate changes in direction from supervisors and internal/external changes (such as evolving needs of beneficiaries, new requirements of partners) ;
- Make the mission inspiring to our team: Recognizes and shares with team members the ways in which individual contributions relate to WFP’s mission ;
- Make our mission visible in everyday actions: Sets own goals in alignment with WFP’s overall operations, and is able to communicate this link to others.
People :
- Look for ways to strengthen people’s skills: Assesses own strengths and weaknesses to increase self-awareness, and includes these in conversations on own developmental needs ;
- Create an inclusive culture: Participates in open dialogue, and values the diverse opinion of others, regardless of background, culture, experience, or country assignment ;
- Be a coach & provide constructive feedback: Proactively seeks feedback and coaching to build confidence, and develop and improve individual skills ;
- Create an “I will”/”We will” spirit: Participates in accomplishing team activities and goals in the face of challenging circumstances.
Performance :
- Encourage innovation & creative solutions: Shows willingness to explore and experiment with new ideas and approaches in own work ;
- Focus on getting results: Consistently delivers results within individual scope of work on time, on budget and without errors ;
- Make commitments and make good on commitments: Commits to upholding individual accountabilities and responsibilities in the face of ever-changing country or functional priorities ;
- Be Decisive: Makes rational decisions about individual activities when faced with uncertain circumstances, including in times of ambiguity regarding information or manager direction.
Partnership :
- Connect and share across WFP units: Seeks to understand and adapt to internal or cross-unit teams’ priorities and preferred working styles ;
- Build strong external partnerships: Demonstrates ability to understand and appropriately respond to and/or escalate needs of external partners ;
- Be politically agile & adaptable: Portrays an informed and professional demeanor toward internal and external partners and stakeholders ;
- Be clear about the value WFP brings to partnerships: Provides operational support on analyses and assessments that quantifies and demonstrates WFP’s unique value as a partner.
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, Voucher) | Demonstrates ability to analyse and consolidate quantitative and qualitative information from different sources (e.g., market studies) to inform transfer modality selection and programme development. |
| Broad Knowledge of Specialized areas (i.e. Nutrition, VAM, etc.) | Demonstrates the ability to interpret basic data in the context of WFP specialised fields to contribute to technical programme design, implementation and monitoring. |
| Emergency Programming | Displays capacity to provide inputs into the development, implementation and realignment of high quality emergency programmes. |
| Strategic Policy Engagement w/ Government | Develops thorough recommendations using multiple inputs (e.g., government counsel, research, own experience) to strengthen national or subnational entities and government owned food and nutrition security programmes. |
Other specific job requirements :
Successful applicant must be willing to be permanently based in the identified duty station (Kuajok) with significant travel to operational locations in the field.
Standard minimum qualifications :
Education:
First Level University degree (Bachelor’s) in International Affairs, Economics, Nutrition/Health, Agriculture, Environmental Science, Social Sciences or other field relevant to international development assistance,
Work experience:
Minimum one year of post-graduate professional-level experience in a relevant area.
Language:
National Professional: Fluency (level C) in English language and the duty station’s language, if different.
Desired experiences for entry into the role :
Implementation and monitoring of projects around natural resources management, livelihoods and community asset; e.g. rehabilitating land, creating water conservation systems, improving food production, water harvesting, soil conservation and natural resources management.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
Kindly note that this position is open to South Sudanese nationals only.
DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS
20th June 2019