World Food Program recruits 01 Emergency School Feeding Specialist
The WFP is hiring a Emergency School Feeding Specialist- Regional Bureau for Western Africa (RBD).
- Unit/Division: Programme Support Unit / RBD Dakar
- Contract Type: International Consultancy / CST
- Contract duration: 11 months
- Duty Station (City, Country): Dakar, Senegal
About WFP
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. We are the world’s largest humanitarian organization, saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters, and the impact of climate change.
WFP celebrates and embraces diversity. It is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all its employees and encourages qualified candidates to apply irrespective of race, colour, national origin, ethnic or social background, genetic information, gender, gender identity and/or expression, sexual orientation, religion or belief, HIV status, physical or mental disability.
Background and purpose of the assignment
With over 60 years’ experience in School Feeding, WFP has a trajectory of working with more than 100 countries to set up sustainable national school feeding programmes. Today, millions of children living in poor and vulnerable communities do not have regular access to the nutritious food they need to stay healthy and thrive. This affects their physical and mental development and can keep them from finishing school and building the strong future they deserve.
WFP advocates for the universal adoption of school feeding programmes as a safety net that helps increase children’s access to education and learning opportunities and strengthens their health and nutrition status. WFP focuses increasingly on helping countries to establish and maintain high quality nationally owned programmes. In countries still requiring WFP’s operational support, it implements high quality school feeding programmes with clear hand over strategies.
As the largest humanitarian agency, WFP implements programmes in more than 40 countries in response to armed conflict, natural disasters and food and financial crises. Reaching universal coverage of school feeding programmes will require the development of context-specific approaches to promote access of children to school meal programmes, particularly in fragile emergency and crisis context. For this purpose, WFP is in the process of designing a conflict environments (acute and / or protracted conflicts) and IDP/ refugee settings.
Regional context
RBD provides strategic guidance, policy/technical support and direction to WFP operations and activities in 19 countries. School feeding has grown fast in the region in the past decade and all countries are implementing school feeding programmes. As the largest external partner supporting School Feeding in the region and depending on the capacity and transition stage of the country, WFP plays one or both of the following roles in the region: (i) Direct implementation/service delivery and/or (ii) capacity development and technical assistance.
School Feeding programmes in West and Central Africa region operate in a range of contexts and encompass a diverse array of institutional frameworks, management structures, delivery arrangements, operating and financing models, which reflect the programmatic diversity and complexity of the region. Governments are currently supporting approximately 18 million of the region’s school-aged children with school health and nutrition services, while WFP is supporting around 3 million and NGOs another 1 million.
However, the coverage of programmes is low in most countries, reaching only 16% of the total number of over 136 million school-aged children in the region. An estimated 56 million of children are estimated to be out of school and therefore have neither access to education nor to school meals, health, and nutrition. At the same time, many countries in the region are struggling with violent conflict, particularly in the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin, that seriously affects access to education.
Job purpose
We are seeking an Emergency School Feeding Specialist to support the teams’ work in strengthening school feeding programmes in humanitarian and emergency contexts in the region.
Specifically, you will support the RBD school feeding team in building evidence and sharing knowledge and best practices on emergency school feeding and access to education in emergency contexts, identifying new funding opportunities and advocating for emergency school feeding with donors, partners and governments, and technical backstopping of Country Offices (COs) for the improvement of programme quality in emergency contexts. You will also collaborate with the School Based Programmes Division (SBP) of WFP Headquarters on the global programme guidance manual on school feeding in emergencies and its application in the RBD region.
You will operate under the direct supervision of the Regional School Feeding Advisor, under the overall guidance of the Head of Programme, and will closely work with the other members of the school feeding team at RBD and SBP, as well as other relevant units such as RAM, EPR and CAM.
You will be responsible for carrying out the following tasks and responsibilities:
Accountabilities / responsibilities
Building evidence and sharing knowledge
- Conduct a desk review to compile context specific evidence on the causes of lack of access to education and drop-out in emergency contexts in the region;
- Support COs in the Sahel to conduct risk informed analysis for school feeding programmes;
- Identify context within the region where evidence on the effects of school feeding programmes on social cohesion/peace building, migration prevention, and community engagement could be built through studies;
- Identify good practices that would allow COs to design conflict sensitive ESF programmes, elaborate good practice briefs and present these to COs.
Identifying funding opportunities and supporting advocacy
- Support COs that are in a context of humanitarian crisis to identify funding opportunities for emergency school feeding interventions, and support COs in proposal writing;
- On the basis of the compiled evidence, elaborate an advocacy document on the importance of school feeding to preserve access to education in emergency context;
- Draft inputs for briefings, talking points or presentations to support donor engagement on emergency school feeding, as required.
Technical backstopping of COs
- Provide inputs to the development of concise programme guidance manual on school feeding in emergencies, conflict environments (acute and / or protracted conflicts) and IDP/ refugee settings;
- Adapt the programme guidance manual to the regional context and support COs in its application;
- Identify contexts and opportunities for the implementation of emergency school feeding and support RBD and COs in developing project/programme proposals for these settings;
- Conduct missions to countries with potential or ongoing emergency school feeding operations.
Other
- Participate in RBD school feeding team meetings and monthly update calls with COs;
- Report on emergency school feeding operations in the region;
- Provide inputs to CSP development for the adequate inclusion of emergency school feeding activities.
- Perform other duties as required.
Qualifications & experience required
Education
University degree in Public Policy, Public Administration, International Development, International Relations, Sociology, or other fields relevant to emergency school feeding.
Expérience
- At least 6 years or more of professional experience relevant to emergency school feeding.
- Experience working with WFP is an asset. Experience working in the West African region is an asset.
Technical knowledge & skills
- Understanding of Agenda 2030 and respective targets – particularly SDG1, SDG2 and SDG17 – and how the work of WFP can contribute to achieving them;
- Understanding of WFP’s mandate.
- Understanding of school feeding, especially in emergencies, conflict environments (acute and / or protracted conflicts) and Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) / refugee settings
- Problem solving skills.
- Good analytical skills.
- Demonstrated ability to produce high-quality written outputs.
- Ability to work as part of a team, participating in open dialogues and valuing diverse opinions of others, regardless of gender, culture, background, experience, or country assignment.
- Proficient computer literacy.
Language:
Proficiency (level B) of French and English is required.
Why work with us?
This is an opportunity for an exciting and challenging position in a multi-cultural and interdisciplinary team, based in a unique location, on a topic with high relevance. In addition, we offer:
Meaningful and impactful careers:
Our day-to-day work makes a difference in the lives of the people we serve
Continuous learning and training:
We provide learning tools for our staff to continually develop their careers
Multicultural and stimulating work environment:
We encourage gender and cultural diversity to make our teams stronger
Join us to make a difference, watch this video to know more about us!!
Deadline for applications: 06 March 2022.Postuler