Field Officer

Job Title: Field Officer (Agriculture)

Project: Pilot project on Home Grown School Meal (HGSM) Program
Location: Darchula district headquarters with extensive field visits the nine project Palikas
Project Partner: Mercy Corps
Immediate Supervisor: District Project Coordinator

Background of SAPPROS Nepal
SAPPROS Nepal is a national, non-governmental and non-profit making organization established in 1991 and dedicated to reducing poverty in Nepal. To this end, it works on five holistic components: (a) Organizational development and capacity building; (b) Infrastructure and WASH; (c) Food security and livelihood; (d) DRR, and Resilience and Climate Justice; and (e) Health and Nutrition. The organization follows the principles of integrating institutions, infrastructure, resource generation and local capacity development in order to achieve sustainable development and increase resilience of women, poor, marginalized and vulnerable groups. Through various developmental and livelihood projects, SAPPROS’ outreach increased to 52 districts in the past 30 years, serving over 574,000 households.

Job Purpose

World Food Program (WFP) Nepal as a lead/prime organization in partnership with Mercy Corps and other partners is going to implement a four-year School Meal Program funded by USDA/Food for Education. In the consortium, Mercy Corps provides strategic leadership for the program’s two of the sub-activities ‘Local Purchase of Food: Hybrid Food Basket’ and ‘Home Grown School Feeding: Technical Assistance Post-Hand Over’. The aim of the Mercy Corps’ interventions is to facilitate the development of a fully sustainable and locally managed food system for schools. This includes designing and implementing the strategy and detailed roadmap for schools to self-manage a cash-based program where they locally procure and manage relationships and contracts with local producers, cooperatives, and suppliers to supply the appropriate and necessary school meal food items during relevant timeframes. The program activities will link school feeding programs to smallholder farmers, farmer’s cooperatives, school management, community groups and local government to enhance the program’s long-term sustainability. The target area of the program covers five districts in the Sudurpaschim Province (Darchula, Bajhang, Doti, Achham, and Bajura) and one district in the Karnali Province (Jajarkot), working with 791 schools.

Purpose of Position
The Field Officer (agriculture) will be responsible to implement project components of WFP funded “Home Grown School Feeding Program” in the Darchula district. S/he will be working closely in coordination and collaboration with Palika, Cooperative, and School Management Committee for quality implementation of the program. The duties of the officer include capacity development of farmer groups, distribution of agricultural support, supply chain management development and management of food and vegetables from farmers–cooperative – schools, providing assistance for the promotion of agriculture-related activities, providing technical guidance to the agriculture team, data management, report writing, communication, coordination and networking with government and other relevant stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities and tasks:

• Support Project Coordinator (PC) and other project staff to create the enabling environment at Palika, cooperative, and school for effective delivery of the program activities.
• Provide full support and assistance to PC to develop detailed implementation guidelines (DIG) and detailed implementation plan (DIP) of the program and lead the implementation of Home Grown School Feeding Program activities.
• Under the guidance of PC/Government line agencies provides technical support to JT/JTA, and local communities to plan and implement program-related activities and ensure the quality of the work and meeting the deadline.
• Support in building the capacity of staff and key stakeholders to facilitate the overall process of planning, implementation, and monitoring of program plans at the local and community level ensuring benefits to real vulnerable communities within project municipalities and considering good governance, gender, and social inclusion.
• Work closely with Program Team during planning, implementation, monitoring, and reporting of Program.
• Support/promote pilot demonstration of agricultural-related innovation, technologies and practice.
• Support to develop Policies, Regulations and Meal menus based on locally available nutritious suitable vegetables and crops.
• Review and verification of data related to HGSF Program.
• Coordinate with government, other line agencies, private sector, local NGO/CBOs, and other stakeholders for effective delivery of the program, creating synergy and leveraging of funds.
• Regular field visits to backstop and monitoring of the program.
• Support project coordinator to organize joint monitoring (district/ municipality) involving different stakeholders as per need.
• Prepare project-level synthesis report of the program.
• Support Project coordinator to maintain and compile the database, case studies and reports as required.
• Support project coordinator, HGSFP team/ project staff to manage visits of visitors, guests and representatives from donors and other stakeholders as per need.
• Facilitate and ensure public auditing is being implemented in each activity implementation.
• Perform duties as assigned by the project Coordinator.

Monitoring, Learning and Evaluation:

• Promote activity quality assurance through the following –
  -Activity timeline coordination with field technical assistant
  -Coordinate and oversee data collection during activity to ensure adherence to formats and requirements
  -Conduct activity spot check and monitoring during the implementation period and compile the data as well
  -Ensure the collected data and designed tools capture the project’s data minimum standard – disaggregation, robustness, quality
• Set a deadline for data flow and follow up on that with field technical assistant
• Design data summary of each activity in coordination with field technical assistant and program coordinator
• Make a suggestion to the Mercy Corps team to seek out and provide case studies on project participants
• Compile activity reports from the Palika’s staff in time for donor’s monthly quarterly and annual reporting
• Ensure proper documentation of (soft and hard copies) of tools, reports, data, manuals, guidelines, media reports, visibility items, agreements, MoUs and any other relevant documents and share them with the Mercy Corps team.

Key Skills and Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in agriculture with at least 3 years of experience in relevant subject matter.
• Updated knowledge of key issues in Home Grown School Feeding Program and climate-sensitive production technology.
• Experience in the usage of computers and office software packages.
• Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude.
• Proven networking, team building, organizational and communication skills.
• Ability to work in a multi-culture environment
• Demonstrates good listening skills. Presents view in a convincing way and aware of different perspectives, feelings and concerns.
• A clear understanding of contemporary development issues-particularly in Agriculture and marketing.
• Experience in writing reports, and a good understanding of the development sector of Nepal. Advance use of excel, word, PowerPoint and data analysis. Demonstrate flexibility and open- mindedness. Cross-cultural sensitivity and ability to interact well with diverse groups of people and multiple teams. Ability to write and speak good English.

Additional Competency

• Willingness to be always contactable when needed.
• Willingness to work out of office hours when required.

Means of application:

Interested candidates, who meet the set criteria, are encouraged to submit their Motivation Letter, updated CV along with 3 references through email to Human Resource Manager at hr@sappros.org.np, SAPPROS Nepal, Babarmahal, Kathmandu no later than 5:00 pm on 23 June 2022, Thursday.

Only the short-listed candidates will be notified for the further assessment.

SAPPROS Nepal reserves the right to cancel the vacancy partly or wholly without any reasons whatsoever.

Women, Dalits, Marginalized, and persons with disabilities are highly encouraged to apply for the position.

No telephone calls will be entertained.

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