Vacancy title:
Project Assistant

Jobs at:
Land O’Lakes

Deadline of this Job:
28th October 2018

Duty Station:
Kigali, Rwanda

Summary
Date Posted: 15th October 2018 , Base Salary: Not Disclosed , Employment Type: Full-Time

Land O’Lakes International Development is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit helping communities around the world build economies by strengthening agriculture from farm-to-fork, helping businesses grow, and linking farmers to markets. Since our start in 1981, we have been leveraging nearly 100 years of expertise in dairy, animal nutrition, crop inputs and agricultural insights from our close affiliate, Land O’Lakes, Inc., a farmer-owned agribusiness committed to fulfilling its purpose of feeding human progress.

JOB DETAILS:

PROJECT ASSISTANT
Cooperative Development Project-4 (CD4)
Kigali, Rwanda

Background:
Land O’Lakes International Development is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit helping communities around the world build economies by strengthening agriculture from farm-to-fork, helping businesses grow, and linking farmers to markets. Since our start in 1981, we have been leveraging nearly 100 years of expertise in dairy, animal nutrition, crop inputs and agricultural insights from our close affiliate, Land O’Lakes, Inc., a farmer-owned agribusiness committed to fulfilling its purpose of feeding human progress.

Our team is made up of nearly 350 employees who are committed to market-led approaches, and passionate about collaborating locally to create lasting inclusive economic growth. By unlocking the potential of agriculture for the last 36 years, the lives of more than 3 million people have been transformed through nearly 300 programs in more than 80 countries.

Project Description:
Land O’Lakes International Development is implementing a cooperative development project in Rwanda, Cooperative Development Program – 4 (CD4).
Land O’Lakes Cooperative Development Program (CDP) has pursued the goal of increasing the performance of cooperative enterprises to improve the livelihoods of their members and contribute to building more inclusive and resilient communities. Over the past 6 years, Land O’Lakes has partnered with cooperatives in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda to help improve cooperative performance in response to evolving market conditions. Our recent work in the dairy and maize sectors focused on partnering with cooperatives that have leveraged economies of scale through horizontal or vertical integration—working with each partner to improve operational management, organizational governance, and business decision-making. CD4 is now focused on two countries: Rwanda and Malawi working with both cooperatives as well as with apex organizations, academic institutions, and service providers.

Position Summary and Primary Responsibilities
The Project Assistant’s responsibilities are focused on providing direct support to the Rwanda Cooperative Development Manager in improving the cooperative enabling environment as well as increasing business performance of cooperatives; through sound planning and execution of project workshops & symposiums, mobilizing cooperatives to project trainings and data collection endeavours, provide general administrative support to the project and other day to day tasks involved with project implementation.

Detailed responsibilities include, but are not limited to:
Assist in improving the business performance of partner cooperative enterprises (30%)

• Work with Cooperative Development Manager in identifying ideal project partner cooperative organizations
  
• Conduct periodic performance assessments on partner cooperative organizations in collaboration with the Project Training Facilitator
  
• Ensure impactful partnerships are initiated with project beneficiaries – work may include collaborating with Project Training Facilitator in identifying performance areas of improvement, draft relevant partnership agreements with the project beneficiaries.
  
• Assist with any procurements of Rwanda firms to conduct work for Land O’Lakes- this includes assisting in finalizing terms of reference, advertising in local papers and coordinating a selection process under the guidance of the project lead.
  
• Work with the Project Training facilitator to source and execute relevant capacity building assignments in Rwanda, with individual consultants and or firms.
  
• Coordinate partner cooperatives’ exchange visits in Rwanda
  
• Maintain adequate and verifiable documents following Land O’Lakes processes for the procurement of consultants and firms – upload all documents to Land O’Lakes internal SharePoint knowledge management system.
  

Planning, execution, and follow-up for workshops, symposiums and other meetings with stakeholders and project partners (60%)

• Work directly with Cooperative Development Manager to organize stakeholder meetings – this will include but not be limited to procuring meeting venue, drafting & distributing invitations, following up with participants, setting agendas, ensuring adequate materials and audio-visual equipment for each meeting and capturing meeting notes.
  
• Serve as a thoughtful link between the project and project partner organization implementing the cooperative Learning Platform. This may include close collaboration with Cooperative Development Manager to organize successful Cooperative Learning Platform meetings at both national and district levels.
  
• Liaise with the Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Manager to track outputs and outcomes associated with any workshops, symposiums, and other stakeholder meetings. This will include, but is not limited to: attendee data/list, meeting notes
  
• Support project team in organizing annual symposiums/workshops – which would include expositions, research symposium, and financial services symposium; these will entail large gatherings of key stakeholders. Work will include similar tasks to the stakeholder meetings, but on a larger scale and with more time involved to plan, organize and execute.
  
• Assist with other event planning, coordination, and logistics.
  

Assist in the Implementation of Project Objectives (10%)

• Occasional visits to cooperatives and unions for meetings, facilitate consultant led trainings or activities, follow-up on needed support.
  
• Mobilize cooperatives to ensure successful M&E indicators collection as well as smooth enrollment of other project data collection related studies.
  
• Collaborationg with the Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Manager to ensure quality data is collected from cooperatives, consultants, firms, and other stakeholders.
  
• Ensure good collaboration with partner cooperative leadership, to inform capacity needs as well as implementation progress.
  
• Represent the project at district level meetings/forums, as may be delegated by the Cooperative Development Manager.
  
• Collect match/cost-share and leverage related information as requested by the Rwanda Cooperative Development Manager, and or the HQ Program manager.
  
• Attend the project team meetings.
  
• Assist in other tasks as called upon.
  

Reporting & Supervision:

• Supervised by the Cooperative Development Manager-Rwanda;
  
• Day to day collaboration with the Rwanda Training Facilitator.
  

Desired Skills and Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in management or any other related agricultural development field/subject.
  
• 5 years professional of experience working with agricultural cooperatives and other organizations in the cooperative movement
  
• Proven experience organizing events/workshops (planning, executing and procurements)
  
• Experience in monitoring project consultants and service providers
  
• Self—motivated and willing to take on a variety of different assignments and tasks while working as part of a small team
  
• Ability to travel outside of Kigali to meet with project partners and support field activities
  
• Good computer skills- effective use of Microsoft office package and internet
  
• Fluent in English and Kinyarwanda