Avis d’appel à candidature : PAM recherche un.e Responsable de la politique du programme au Malawi.

JOB PURPOSE

The WFP Malawi Country Strategic Plan is a five-year strategy aimed at supporting national efforts on hunger and nutrition, reduce vulnerability to food insecurity and malnutrition in recognition of gender and age in order to advance its resilience agenda in anticipation of recurrent shocks.

Under one of the Strategic Outcomes: “Vulnerable populations in food-insecure communities benefit from strengthened shock-responsive social protection systems and efficient supply chains that ensure access to safe, nutritious food all year round”, WFP supports the Government of Malawi in implementation of School Meals programme.  With a policy to achieve universal coverage, the Government and its partners are currently reaching about 50 percent of all primary schools with the School Meals Programme. WFP supports an estimated 600,000 children in 450 primary schools in 7 most food insecure districts.

The purpose of the assignment is to support the government’s efforts by leading WFP Malawi’s School Meals programme as outlined in the Country Strategic Plan. School Meals programme is a critical safety net, as also recognized in the Malawi National Social Support Programme (MNSSP), as well as an essential component of an integrated school health and nutrition package, as outlined in the School Health and Nutrition Policy, WFP works with the Government and communities to effect national best practice guidelines for school meals, seeking to gradually expand Home-Grown School Meals (HGSM) models across the country and assist in the development of a more sustainable national school meals programme. This is also in line with the integrated approach of WFP’s CSP in Malawi, as linkages with activities supporting livelihoods and smallholder and local farmer organisations are established to supply nutritious, locally produced, diversified food commodities to schools for the SMP.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (not all-inclusive)

The Activity Manager will focus on the planning, implementing, and reporting of activities in partnership with functional areas to support the achievement of  the relevant Strategic outcome  with a focus on school meals as per WFP’s Malawi CSP.  Under the direct supervision of the Strategic Outcome Manager, the Programme Officer – Activity Manager shall perform the following duties:

• Ensure day-to-day management of implementation  of School feeding activity results in outputs that meet the CSP’s plan, at the appropriate quality, on time and within budget. Proactively assess risks, monitor overall progress and initiate corrective actions as appropriate to resolve issues.
• Plan and manage the activity’s budget, monitoring expenditures against outputs as the programme progresses. Manage the implementation of grants, ensuring timely completion of all associated deliverables and provide inputs for reporting to the donors as needed.
• Collaborate with and report progress on the activity delivery at regular intervals to functional managers and other staff with activity management responsibilities.
• Manage the performance of supervised staff. Facilitate the recruitment and development of individuals to the activity programme teams.
• Ensure that knowledge generated for and by the activity is captured and shared for use by internal and external stakeholders.

• Keep abreast on trends and issues related to school health and nutrition including gender equity in Malawi and globally, analyse and inform the internal organization management for any needs of programming decision making for the School feeding activity or cross-cutting elements
• Contribute inputs and information for the evaluation of the on-going CSP, specific evaluation and studies related to school feeding and support design of new CSP building on evidence generated and lessons learnt from current implementation.
• Support resource mobilization efforts, eg. through drafting of concept notes, providing inputs to advocacy related material (proposals, donor briefs, talking points for management etc.)
• Facilitate policy engagement and dialogue for influencing and or policy development and reformation with Key Government Partners and other stakeholders particularly in the area of School health and nutrition.
• Provide an analytical basis for discussions with the national government on WFP’s interventions to achieve its development goals.
• Represent WFP in external meetings. Participate and/or co-lead when needed in the relevant cluster, technical working groups, and other forums related to education, school health, and nutrition, through direct participation, briefings, information products, among others.
• Develop and manage partnerships with external partners including UN, government, private sectors, academia/knowledge sector, and implementing partners. Liaise with partners (internal and external) to share experience, lessons learned, and best practices.

• Support the capacity building of WFP staff, partners and national government to design and implement school feeding, e.g. through providing inputs into training materials.
• Some specific responsibilities will also include:
• Project management of the expected expansion of the HGSM, ensuring strengthening of quality of implementation, oversight and adherence to SOPs.
• Build a relationship with the Government and other stakeholders at the technical level to ensure understanding and ownership of HGSM as well as community participation for more sustainable solutions to deliver school meals. This will require the exercise of higher communication skills and strategic partnership building.
• Identify capacity gaps, and lead the implementation of capacity strengthening activities for Government, especially in relation to design and necessary tools/systems to manage HGSM by Government, integration of HGSM into national planning processes and inputs into key policies, strategies
• Identify opportunities to improve the current model for HGSM, including procurement, funding and distribution planning methodology to design a more sustainable and transferable programme.
• Perform other related duties as required.