Senior Manager, Regional Training (Africa) at Rainforest Alliance

Position summary:

The Senior Manager, Regional Training Africa will lead and coordinate the development, rollout and implementation of training strategy in Africa with a primary focus on training producers, groups and supply chain partners on the Rainforest Alliance Sustainable Agricultural Standard. They will coordinate closely with Country Directors and Rainforest Alliance  trainers to advise on training capacity, implementation priorities and planning and statistics, and the Knowledge Sharing Unit in the Producer Resource HUB to customize and implement global training best practices and tools that both enhance competencies among Rainforest Alliance trainers and Associate Trainers and enable systematic monitoring, evaluation and reporting on the reach and effectiveness of Rainforest Alliance training interventions in the region.

This position does not supervise any staff member.

Responsibilities: 
The Rainforest Alliance’s Core Values are Impact, Change, Collaboration, Openness and Trust and as such they form the basis of the behaviors we demonstrate:

• Collect intelligence and offer strategic insights to support the Knowledge Sharing Unit in the design, testing, contextualization and piloting of global training content, competency-based participatory methodologies, and protocols for monitoring, evaluating and reporting Rainforest Alliance training reach and effectiveness (including Certification Partner Support and select L&C programs) at the global level;
• Provide tools, coaching and troubleshooting to support the regional programs to customize and implement Knowledge Sharing Unit global training content, competency-based methodologies, and protocols for monitoring, evaluating and reporting RA training reach and effectiveness;
• Lead regional coordination spaces, advise Country Directors and Senior Directors, backstop inductions of new Certification Partner Support staff, and troubleshoot as needed to ensure sufficient capacity and quality of Certification Partner Support, as well as roll-out, adaptation and troubleshooting of globally developed training best practices;
• Coordinate within and – as warranted - across regions on the design and development and improvement of local, regional and global training materials, with an emphasis on producer-facing materials, and ensure application of Knowledge Sharing Unit global content and competency-based methodologies within these regionally created training materials;
• On a monthly basis, identify challenges and findings with other Regional Training Managers to jointly identify and identify common bottlenecks to senior leadership;
• Work closely with Knowledge Sharing Unit apply learnings from the evaluation of training reach and effectiveness to adaptively manage and improve design of annual training plans; definition of local training material priorities, and otherwise evolve regional training strategies;
• Proactively raise training priorities to Knowledge Sharing Unit and Senior directors to facilitate annual planning processes, and for Knowledge Sharing Unit to design of training content and competency-based methodologies that are custom fitted to these training priorities;
• Advise on strategic investment priorities through assessing field data, and communicating with key local internal (i.e. local Certification Support Partner Officers & S&A staff) and external (i.e. cooperative leaders and company representatives) customers;
• Coordinate with Knowledge Sharing Unit to ensure regional needs related to accessing global training content and methodology best practices, as well as reporting on training interventions, are we reflected in the ongoing design and maintenance of the Rainforest Alliance Learning Network (RALN) platform, and Knowledge Hub.
• Other tasks as assigned.

Qualifications: 

• Bachelor’s degree, or equivalent in a relevant field like agronomics, business management with 10+ years of professional experience in program management and certification; master’s degree preferred;
• Excellent organizing and communication skills with strong intercultural sensitivity; 
• Demonstrated subject matter expertise in one or more issues critical to agricultural training under the Rainforest Alliance Standard (i.e. deforestation, Human & labour rights, agrochemicals management, etc);
• At least 5 years direct experience in instructional training design and implementing training programs with farming and forestry communities in the region;
• Experience implementing protocols for monitoring and reporting the reach and effectiveness of field-based interventions an asset;
• Network and knowledge of key producer and company partners in at least one strategic sector (coffee, Tea, cocoa, fruits, palm oil, forest products, etc);
• Basic computer literacy is required, including Microsoft Powerpoint, excel and others;
• Fluency in English verbal and written. French /Additional languages an asset;
• Ability to travel a minimum of 30% per year, nationally and internationally.