Regional Nutrition and Health Specialist at Action Against Hunger International

Description

Action Against Hunger-USA is part of the Action Against Hunger International network, which provides humanitarian relief in over 40 countries worldwide in the sectors of nutrition, health, water/sanitation, and food security. Action Against Hunger-USA, an independent NGO, currently manages operations in 7 countries: Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Zambia and Haiti. Action Against Hunger-USA has over $92 million in programs, and approximately 2000 staff based in in the various country offices and the three Head Quarter Locations of New York City, Washington D.C, Nairobi. Additional growth is anticipated.

Summary of the Position

As a member of Action Against Hunger Horn and Eastern Africa Regional Team; and within the Knowledge and Innovation Hub, the Regional Nutrition and Health Specialist will deliver the global technical strategy, inform the development and implementation of nutrition and health interventions and initiatives in Horn and Eastern Africa. Specifically, the main responsibilities are:

• Maximizing impact in country programs by supporting core programming, providing demand-driven support to field-based program & project implementation and management.
• Inform learning, capitalization and uptake of Action Against Hunger programming and experiences.
• Engaging strategically to influence nutrition and health sector policies, practices of key stakeholders based on evidence including external coordination, representation and communication at regional level and globally as needed.
• Supporting the mobilization of critical resources through the design of country and regional programming, integrating innovative approaches and applied best practices in the area of nutrition and health.
• To advise talent acquisition on the identification, selection and orientation of technical field staff.

Essential Job Duties

Country Program Support:

• Advise on the design and implementation of high quality nutrition and health needs assessments.
• Advise on the nutrition and health components of country strategies, approaches and decisions.
• Operational and advisory support to nutrition and health technical sections of donor’s proposals developed by country teams, ensuring technical relevance, coherence, feasibility and appropriate budgeting.
• Demonstrate compliance with Action Against Hunger technical policies and guidelines.
• Advise country teams on existing or proposed Nutrition & Health programs to ensure relevance, impact, sustainability and quality of the intervention.
• Deliver on-the-job support to country programs when requested by the field and/or HQ, following a clear Terms of Reference proposed by the country team.

Technical support, organizational learning and uptake

• Inform as necessary Action Against Hunger strategic initiatives, including Action Against Hunger technical strategy.
• Represent the technical, knowledge and innovations hub discussions in the Horn and Eastern Africa and ensure coherence, interaction and integration with other pool team members from other sectors and departments
• Support in the documentation, capitalization and dissemination of program experiences and lessons learned.
• Promote Action Against Hunger guidelines, manuals and position papers.
• Identify and engage with other agencies &/or partners in Nutrition & Health in the Horn and Eastern Africa, and Zambia to ensure up-to-date programming, tools, technical developments and innovations.

Regional representation, coordination and external communication

• Represent Action Against Hunger technical experiences and positioning in regional coordination, working groups and technical fora
• Identify funding opportunities for nutrition and health programming at regional level which contribute to Action Against Hunger overall strategy and development
• Identify and engage with international organizations, donors, academic institutions and initiatives at regional level to further Action Against Hunger mandate, profile and strategy
• Contribute to External Relations (ER)/ communication efforts, press releases and other documentation at regional level.
• Facilitate health and nutrition information, experiences and case studies to the Knowledge innovation hub, ER/communications for public communications, website materials at regional and global level.

Resource Mobilization and Program Development:

• Working in partnership with key players from business development, regional and country teams; participate and support applications/proposals for strategic grants and contracts for country, regional and global programming that integrates innovative approaches and best practices in the area of nutrition.
• Build and develop relationships for strategic collaborations and partnerships with key stakeholders, including academic and policy institutions in line with Action Against Hunger USA’s technical strategy.
• Engage with private fundraising and communication teams to mobilize corporate and private funding to support the mission of the organization.
• Review and give inputs to concept notes and proposals from country teams to ensure evidence-based sound technical nutrition approaches and interventions are included.

Human Resources - Selection, Placement and Orientation:

• Advise in the recruitment of nutrition and health technical field practitioners by providing a technical assessment of each candidate’s skills & experience (including screening CVs, evaluating technical tests, conducting technical interviews, sharing documentation and notes with HR for the database and placement purposes).
• Advise and inform the development and technical sign off of nutrition and health Job descriptions for country and regional related technical positions.
• Advise HR to determine which available candidates are technically qualified for open positions.
• Advise HR in the development and maintenance of a nutrition and health technical fieldworker pool, including sharing information about nutrition and health staff (availability, technical capacities), and, at HR’s request, providing other Action Against Hunger HQs with technical feedback.
• Facilitate briefing/debriefing of nutrition and health technical staff for Action Against Hunger country programs.

Requirements

• Post-Graduate degree (Master’s Degree or higher) in Human Nutrition, Public Health, Sociology, Anthropology, Medicine, or relevant Degree in Nutrition/Public Health with minimum 10 years’ relevant experience.
• A minimum of 6 years’ previous work in Nutrition & Health programs overseas with an international humanitarian organization.

Required Skills and Experience

• Experience working in humanitarian contexts, emergency and post-crisis. Familiarity with all steps of the Project Cycle Management;
• Excellent knowledge of technical fields related to Nutrition and Health which may include nutrition related Public Health, Community Mobilization, Monitoring & Evaluation.
• Good working knowledge of CMAM and IMAM, SMART, SQEAC, KAP, IYCF, iCCM, or other NUT programming.
• Applied knowledge of malnutrition causal framework, epidemiology, research, and behavior change preferred.
• Good working knowledge of various computer software and nutrition related programs.
• Genuine interest in and commitment to the humanitarian principles of Action Against Hunger
• Capacity to represent the organization within the Action Against Hunger network and externally to other humanitarian actors, funding agencies and private donors.
• Must possess strong organizational skills and be able to pay attention to writing and reviewing detailed proposals and reports, as well as preparing and editing technical guidelines and training materials.
• Ability to take initiative and prioritize multiple tasks with minimum supervision.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, ability to work both independently and as a member of a team