Technical Advisor I – Private Public Partnerships and Alliances

About CRS

Catholic Relief Services is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. CRS works to save, protect, and transform lives in need in more than 100 countries, without regard to race, religion or nationality. CRS’ relief and development work is accomplished through programs of emergency response, HIV, health, agriculture, education, microfinance and peacebuilding.

Job Summary:

You will provide technical advice and support to a range of program design and implementation issues in the area of LSFF-related Partnerships in line with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) program quality principles and standards, donor guidelines, and industry best practices to West Africa country teams to advance the delivery of high-quality programming to the poor and vulnerable. Your advice, knowledge, and support will contribute to determining how effective, adaptive and innovative CRS’ LSFF and Nutrition programming is across the globe.

Roles and Key Responsibilities:

• Support the development and contribute to the implementation of agency-wide strategies, standards, tools and best practices in Large Scale Food Fortification that effectively engage partners, donors, and governments. Help ensure a cross-sectoral approach integrating gender, protection mainstreaming, and disaster risk reduction.
• Provide technical solutions to CP teams, remotely and on-site, for strategic planning and how to best apply standards, best practices, partnership principles, tools and M&E, helping to ensure high-quality implementation.
• Support frameworks for institutionalized and sustainable establishment and management of multi-stakeholder public private partnership national alliances for food fortification
• Contribute to, and in some cases lead, the development of the technical design for proposals. Support the process of preparation, design, submission and approval of project concepts and full-fledged proposals. As needed, act as a technical writer on proposal development teams. Advise project teams on integrating donor strategies, priorities and technical requirements into CRS’ approach.
• Support capacity strengthening initiatives in LSFF programming for staff and partner, in particular NAFF through helping develop learning and training strategies and agendas/curriculums, conducting trainings and workshops, and coaching.
• Collect and analyze program data, capture and share lessons learned and best practices for specific projects to facilitate improvements in decision-making and contribute to the LSFF learning agenda.
• Contribute to maintaining relationships with donors, peer organizations, research, and other institutions, participate in forums in the area of LSFF to collect and share best practices and promote CRS’ work.

Basic Qualifications

• Master’s Degree in Business, Economic Development, Food Science/Technology, Nutrition, or relevant field required.
• Minimum of three years relevant work experience with progressive responsibilities, ideally with an international NGO, private sector company, or government entity with minimum of two years relevant field-based experience in Strategic Partnerships and/or Advocacy.
• Knowledge of technical principles and concepts in Nutrition, specifically Large-Scale Food Fortification. General knowledge of other related disciplines to ensure proper cross-sectoral approach.
• Experience in project design and proposal development. Experience in writing content for proposals.
• Knowledge of capacity strengthening best practices.
• Experience with program monitoring and evaluation and analysis.
• Experience and skills in networking and relations with donors, peer organizations, and faith-based and civil society partners. Understanding of partnership principles.
• Experience in multi-stakeholder PPP stakeholder coordination on Nutrition and/or national alliances for food fortification

Preferred Qualifications

• Proficient in MS Office packages (Excel, Word, PowerPoint), Web Conferencing Applications, information and budget management systems, knowledge-sharing networks.

Required Languages – English and French required

Travel – include percentage of required travel, if applicable. Could be stated as Must be willing and able to travel up to 30%.

Supervisory Responsibilities: None

Key Working Relationships:

Internal: CRS country program leadership across the 15 country ECOWAS region; CRS WARO regional leadership; HQ Nutrition STAs; IDEA donor engagement and BD teams, as relevant; CRS CARO Health regional, PQ and BD staff with respect to ECOWAS countries that fall within the CRS Central Africa region.

External: WAHO; ECOWAS member country Ministries of Health and other government entities relevant to regional and country-level LSFF standards and strategies; peer NGOs active in the LSFF/Nutrition space; private sector companies that manufacture fortified staple foods such as flour and oil across the region

Catholic Relief Services carries out the commitment of the Bishops of the United States to assist the poor and vulnerable overseas. Our Catholic identity is at the heart of our mission and operations. We welcome as a part of our staff and as partners people of all faiths and secular traditions who share our values and our commitment to serving those in need.