Summary
Date Posted: Tuesday, February 18 2025, Base Salary: Not Disclosed

JOB DETAILS:
• Recognizing the transformative potential of school meal programmes (SMP), a group of member states launched the School Meals Coalition at the UN Food Systems Summit in 2021. The Coalition is a government-led global platform driving actions to urgently improve and scale up school meal programmes to ensure that every child has the opportunity to receive a healthy, nutritious meal in school by 2030. Since its creation, the membership of the School Meals Coalition (co-chaired by France, Finland and Brazil) steadily increased from 46 countries in September 2021 to over 100 countries from all regions across the world. The Coalition has resulted in governments taking a central role and moving rapidly to advance school meal programs, with the topic now globally positioned as a key priority. As of today, the Coalition has received national commitments from 49 countries.
• To support Governments in achieving their national commitments in relation to school meals, the partners of the Coalition are now exploring the opportunities to support provision of strategic on-demand technical assistance at the country level. This technical assistance will aim at strengthening countries’ abilities to address key challenges and unlock school meal programme’s benefits. Through this initiative, countries can access the technical capacities, partnerships, and tools available within the initiative and across the School Meals Coalition ecosystem to address national priorities and needs of the national school meals programme.
• The Consultant based in [country] will support the Government in identifying, designing and implementing strategic technical assistance through a consultative process that promotes multi-sectorality and multi-stakeholder engagement. This will envisage localizing the concept of the global School Meals Coalition to the context of [country] to leverage national and global expertise (technical expertise, tools and resources) and expand access to new partners in support of national commitments. Advocacy and facilitation of cross-sectoral engagement and action will be critical to position the national school meals programme and build momentum to gain support from key stakeholders. The activities will be done through a Technical Assistance Facility project funded by the Global Partnership for Education.

Accountabilities/Responsibilities:
• The Technical Assistance Facility country coordinator will lead the WFP Country Office efforts in designing, coordinating and consolidating the provision of strategic technical support to the Government to achieve their vision for school meals. This will entail supporting the WFP Country Office in high-level engagement with the Government and key stakeholders engaged in school health and nutrition in [COUNTRY], playing a convenor’s role to support multi-sectorality of the school meals programme, as well as enhancing engagement of wider range of stakeholders in support of the programme. The Coordinator will have dual reporting lines: 1) to the HQ-based team on TA content and strategic engagement with partners at the global level; and 2) to the WFP Country Director on the strategic engagement at the country level. Duties include:
• Act as the WFP Country Office lead for designing, consolidating, planning, implementing, reporting and learning on the provision of the strategic technical assistance. Lead/support consultative processes engaging all relevant actors in the country and ensuring multi-sectorality to identify priority actions in the immediate, mid- and long term. Assist Government stakeholders in identifying solutions, provide technical expertise for the planning, formulation, and implementation of the school meals programme (in the areas of evidence generation, policy and regulatory frameworks, funding, institutional capacity and coordination, design and implementation (including monitoring systems), participation of non-state stakeholders). Support the Government in articulating the workplans in support of identified capacity needs and provide support in their validation at the technical and decision-making levels (with the Government and respective sector groups as applicable). Lead the design/update of a partnerships mapping focused on the identified priorities. Support the Government in defining the partnership approach that can help them leverage the expertise provided by partners to tackle identified capacity needs and scale-up the impacts of the national school meals programme. Support the Government in facilitating/convening activities aimed at engaging new partners in support of the school feeding programme (school health and nutrition where applicable). In line with the partnership approach, develop and maintain operational and strategic partnerships with Government entities and respective stakeholders engaged in the setup and implementation of the programme. Lead the planning and implementation of the activities. In collaboration with respective technical teams, facilitate the design and implement a robust monitoring framework and learning approach for the activities. Provide technical advice and/or mobilize technical expertise (in collaboration with other WFP Country Office teams, the WFP’s Regional Bureau, Headquarters, School Meals Coalition Initiatives and partners), on a wide range of school meals related programme and policy issues including assessment and analysis, the choice of objectives, models, activities, the deployment and testing of innovative approaches and the development of strategies to support Government. Collaborate with technical teams and/or experts as well as partners to promote coherence between technical activities (including support missions), ensure quality of final deliverables and consolidate emerging learnings. Ensure clear communication of goals, progress, and challenges to senior Government officials, share their feedback with WFP team and advise/discuss necessary adjustments, where applicable. Support WFP Country Office leadership in defining and implementing an advocacy approach (based on advocacy goals and objectives, influencing mapping, context specific advocacy needs). Identify advocacy opportunities, support the preparation of the key advocacy activities and messaging. Lead the development of funding proposals to secure sustainable resourcing in support of strategic technical assistance activities and joint initiatives with partners/stakeholders. Prepare timely and quality analytical reports, publications, and information products, and work closely with the Communications and Partnerships team for effective dissemination. Systematically produce quality documentation to track the implementation of the school feeding programme so that the broader technical assistance and WFP-specific experience contributes to building sectoral knowledge and best practices in the area of school health and nutrition. Closely monitor the budget and expenditures related to the activities to ensure the best use of resources to achieve objectives within a moderate budget. Perform any other duties that will support implementation of the strategic technical assistance in [Country].

Qualifications & Experience Required:
• Education:
• Advanced post-graduate degree in public administration, education, international development, social sciences or other related fields with additional years of related work experience and/or training courses.
• Experience:
• At least 15 years of senior level experience in strategic engagement with national governments, design and management of technical assistance projects. Significant experience in establishing strategic partnerships with development partners at the national level (global, regional experience will be an advantage), and with a wide variety of stakeholders and subject matter experts in education, food security, nutrition, health, social protection, agriculture, gender and/or related fields.
• Broad senior-level professional and technical experience in policy and strategy formulation, research, programme management, project planning and institutional strengthening in a large institution in the above-mentioned sectors.
• Demonstrated capacity to manage complex projects, including coordination of organization-wide initiatives country and/or regional hierarchies.
• Previous work experience with the national sector platforms (in the above-mentioned sectors). Experience working with the education sector groups will be a strong advantage.

Knowledge & Skills:
Relationship/partner management, resource mobilization, excellent writing and analytical skills, project management, proposal writing.
Languages:
Fluency (level C) English. Intermediate knowledge (level B) of a second UN language is a plus.

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Work Hours: 8

Experience in Months: 180

Level of Education: Bachelor Degree

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