Nutrition Technical Lead

TEAM/PROGRAMME: Programme Development and Quality

LOCATION: Home-based for one year; year 2 in country (Myanmar), if conditions allow

Number of Position: 1

GRADE: TBC

CONTRACT LENGTH: Fixed Term

CHILD SAFEGUARDING:

Level 3: the post holder will have contact with children and/or young people either frequently (e.g. once a week or more) or intensively (e.g. four days in one month or more or overnight) because they work country programs; or are visiting country programs; or because they are responsible for implementing the police checking/vetting process staff.

ROLE PURPOSE:

The Nutrition Technical Lead provides strategic technical leadership to Myanmar Country Nutrition Programmes. The Technical Lead plays a lead role in setting strategic direction for the sector, designing new programs and projects, and identifying and pursing strategic partnerships. S/he is responsible for ensuring program quality for a range of projects, directly supervises the Nutrition technical advisors, and works in close collaboration with the Nutrition Head of Programme. S/he plays a senior representational and advocacy role with key national and international stakeholdersas appropriate in the current country context, and works on a regular basis with SC members and internal stakeholders to maximize programme impact. The Technical Lead ensures that program learning, research and evaluation findings are channelled towards advocacy, continuous improvements, innovation and new program design.

SCOPE OF ROLE:

· Reports to: Programme Development and Quality Director.

· Staff directly reporting to this post: 2x Nutrition Advisors

· Staff indirectly reporting to this post: None

KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY :

Strategic Direction, Program Design and Development

• Take lead role in formulating CO’s vision for long-term programming in Nutrition in Myanmar aligning with country strategic plans for 2022-2024.
• Introduce innovative ideas and approaches to support children Nutrition issues in Myanmar; Identify needs and opportunities for potential programmes, in particular in response to the current humanitarian needs, through situation analyses/feasibility studies, networking, participation in cluster coordination as relevant, and leveraging research and evaluation findings from both internal and external sources.
• Encourage and facilitate implementation of a Strategic Learning Agenda for Nutrition in Myanmar for systematic and a coordinated approach to evidence generation and learning.
• Work with other teams (BD, Ops) to develop funding strategies and proposals to expand the Nutrition portfolio in line with strategic priorities, technical best practice, and research/learnings from current/past programming. This will involve continuously developing concepts and innovations and packaging them for a range of donors, both for proactive and reactive fundraising efforts.
• Continuously assess technical staffing patterns and competencies to ensure that the right technical expertise is in place to support Nutrition portfolio needs and development.
• Identify and pursue opportunities for synergistic, inter-sectoral programs to address the holistic needs of children, especially the most deprived.
• Facilitate a culture of learning and sharing on Nutrition involving staff from different teams across the country programme

Programme Quality:

• Overall responsibility to ensure programme quality of SC’s Nutrition programming in Myanmar
• Identify internal and external capacity building opportunities and resources to provide high quality technical assistance to Nutrition projects, supporting technical staff, partner agencies and others to build knowledge and technical competence.
• Integrate programme learning across the sectors, ensuring coherence of technical approaches across programmes, identifying best practice, and ensuring inter-sectoral complementarity.
• Develop strategies to ensure gender equity, social an disability inclusion, child participation and beneficiary accountability in all programmes.
• Complete the relevant Silver Common Approaches Learning Program course and hold advance knowledge and skills of the Nutrition Common Approaches and be able to provide training, mentoring and support to others.
• Ensure that thematic and internal technical best practices, including SC’s Common Approaches, is applied in collaboration with the programme implementation teams.
• Proactively support the continued country uptake of relevant Common Approaches, ensuring that they are adapted to the Myanmar
• Share results, evidence and learning on Common Approaches and other programes in Myanmar and elsewhere.
• Ensure that all programs have an effective Monitoring Evaluation Accountability and Learning (MEAL) practices throughout the program cycle.
• Ensure that interventions are evaluated using appropriate tools, including process and impact evaluations, and that evidence is rigorously maintained, documented and disseminated internally and externally, to contribute to improvements in programme quality and advocacy efforts.
• Ensure that monitoring and accountability systems (i.e IPTT and FRM) provide information in the appropriate form and at the right time (in different levels) to allow for effective decision making and risk mitigation
• Working closely with MEAL, ensure that all programs have and follow the recommended MEAL practices throughout the program cycle
• Ensure that quality benchmarks are developed for key interventions, as well as all new projects; ensure that ongoing analysis of QBs is used for adaptive management and programme quality improvement
• Support teams to identify , design and carry out operational research related to Nutrition.
• Ensure that Save the Children’s regional and global experience is reflected in Nutrition programmes
• Share CO’s experience and organizational learning with COs as well as with relevant organizations over the globe.

Policy and Advocacy:

• Coordinate closely with the Advocacy, Research, and Evidence teams on policy and advocacy work relating to Nutrition
• Lead on policy and advocacy for the sector, ensuring that Nutrition technical interventions are designed to inform relevant policy concerns. Develop policy briefs and position papers, ensuring the inclusion of technical input from the relevant project managers.
• Lead in networking and articulating Save the Children’s position, policy and strategy in national forums and meetings as appropriate. Engage in key debates related to national Nutrition sector policies and programs, in coordination with technical colleagues and other relevant staff, as context allows and as per the CO’s engagement principles.
• Identify appropriate strategic partnerships for joint advocacy initiatives on related issues

Human Resource Management and Development

• Identify and support professional development and career growth opportunities for Nutrition staff from a technical point of view, and provide mentoring support where appropriate;
• Establish, build and nurture effective teamwork within the Nutrition technical team and ensure a cohesive workplace environment for optimum staff retention.
• Provide leadership to ensure effective ways of working with other teams, in particular with the Nutrition programme implementation teams.
• Create opportunity for staff development in coordination with HR.
• Responsibility to create and maintain a managerial environment where the Child Safeguarding Policy is effectively implemented.

Representation, Coordination and Networking:

• Maintain working relationships with relevant stakeholders.
• Identify partnerships/collaborations and build strong networks with other NGOs, CSOs, donors, UN agencies and academic institutions and the private sector working on Nutrition to collaborate on programs, joint learning, analysis and advocacy initiatives
• Support the identification, selection, technical capacity strengthening and monitoring of new partners in Nutrition.
• Ensure that the country office has effective representation on national, regional and international networks and forum related to Nutrition, and that we participate in conferences/meetings that will enhance our reputation and programming
• Actively participate in technical coordination meetings to ensure synergies with other agencies in our development and humanitarian work, including sectors/clusters at national level.
• Maintain excellent relationships with donors, both in terms of strategic positioning and program delivery
• Represent CO on the Regional and Global meetings on Nutrition, both internal and external.

QUALIFICATIONS , EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

QUALIFICATIONS

Academic: Master degree in relevant field.

SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

Essential :

• At least 7 years of working experience in relevant field.
• Strong leadership abilities
• Excellent understanding and experience on key issues and strategies in Nutrition
• Excellent skills on process facilitation and coordination with high standard.
• Excellent skills in Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning in Nutrition
• Demonstrated experience in humanitarian response
• Excellent inter-personal communication skills
• Strong analytical capacity and proficient understanding of both qualitative and quantitative research methods
• Good presentation skills including policy briefing
• Good supportive supervision skills,
• Fluency in written and spoken English.