Project Coordinator, Food Culture Alliance & Consumer Demand at Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN)

About the Role

The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is seeking a Project Coordinator, Food Culture Alliance & Consumer Demand to establish a new alliance and coordinate across relevant pillars, with a special focus on ‘Strengthening Collaboration’ and ‘Enabling Action’. This role will be offered on a three(3) year fixed term contract, subject to availabilty of funding and will be based in Nairobi, Kenya.

In 2021, GAIN and its partners launched a new alliance Food Culture Alliance(FCA), where society’s preference is for nutritious and sustainable foods. The mission of the Food Culture Alliance is to champion food culture and leverage the toolbox of strategies it provides to shift preferences and increase society’s demand for nutritious and sustainable foods. Food culture requires concerted, cross sector efforts that are aligned towards that shared goal, hence the need to form an alliance.

The Food Culture Alliance is setting up both a global and a country-based structure which are expected to work closely together to ensure a cohesive workplan and strategic focus. At the global level, there is the Global Food Culture Alliance, and it is led by 3 international organisations who comprise the Lead Group:  EAT, Global Business School Network (GBSN), and Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), which hosts the alliance. World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), and Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) are members of the Business Advisory Group that advises the Lead Group as representatives of business sector.

GAIN has recently launched the Nourishing Food Pathways (NFP) programme. One key component of this programme is a project to identify ways of extending the Consumer Demand Generation approach developed by GAIN to include environmental sustainability of diets and foods. Kenya is one of three countries where this project is being implemented.

At the country level, new alliances will be developed in line with the Food Culture Alliance 3-pillar operating model. In countries the operating model will:

• Building Knowledge – support research and learning, apply the strategic framework to address food culture.
• Strengthening Collaboration – develop and coordinate a local alliance to achieve a shared understanding of the need to shift society-wide preferences and commit to coordinated action in the food culture to achieve that aim.​ Open local membership to actors interested in DGA’s work.
• Enabling Action - deepen in-country engagements, identify a preference issue, nurture a coalition, support local fundraising efforts.

The postholder will be expected to establish a new alliance in Kenya and coordinate across all three pillars, but with a special focus on ‘Strengthen Collaboration’ and ‘Enable Action’. The overall purpose is twofold:

• To ensure that the local Food Culture Alliance is a well-functioning ecosystem of connected actors engaged with food culture issues.
• To nurture a coalition that emerges from the local alliance. This person is the main country contact point for all matters related to the Food Culture Alliance. This is expected to be 70% of the role.

The other 30% is focused on project managing the work where GAIN is identifying ways to extend its consumer demand generation approach to promote diets & foods that are both nutritious and environmentally more sustainable.

Key Responsibilities include

• Develop, and coordinate effective stakeholder relationships to secure support for, and good collaboration, on food culture.
• In close coordination with Global Food Culture Alliance, implement the country workplan, as work packages, to ensure that deliverables are met and integrating of the local activities with the overarching global FCA plan.
• Coordinate and facilitate local management meetings.
• Manage the alliance membership database.
• Support the reviewing/editing concept notes.
• Organize events in coordination with service providers, partners or members while ensuring delivery of the learning and socialization activities (e.g., trainings, webinars, events).
• Manage day to day execution of research projects under supervision of global Knowledge Leadership lead for the project.
• Manage creative agency relationship under the supervision of global demand lead for the project.
• Contribute to the interpretation of research and creative brief development and input into the monitoring, learning, evaluation of Food Culture Alliance(FCA).
• Develop written summaries of local activities to support donor reporting.

About you

• The ideal candidate should be highly experienced in stakeholder engagement and able to rally relevant actors within the alliance to strengthen collaboration and enable action. Previous experience coordinating an alliance is highly preferred.
• You should demonstrate ability to understand technical literature in nutrition or food culture and support management of research projects. Experience managing creative agency relationships would be highly desirable.
• You should demonstrate experience communicating health or science information to diverse audiences. Excellent organizational skills and follow-through is necessary to succeed in this role, combined with the ability to translate technical documents for more general audiences.
• The ideal candidate should be able to develop written summaries of local activities to support donor reporting.
• The post holder should have an educational background with a degree in either Sociology/Anthropology, Political Science, Health or Science Communication or relevant field. A diploma or post graduate degree in a specialist competency area is desirable.