Fortification Junior Consultant

WFP celebrates and embraces diversity. It is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all its employees and encourages qualified candidates to apply irrespective of race, color, national origin, ethnic or social background, genetic information, gender, gender identity and/or expression, sexual orientation, religion or belief, HIV status, physical or mental disability.

Job Title: Fortification Junior Consultant

Type of Contract: International Junior Consultant

Division: Nutrition Division

Duty Station (City, Country): Rome HQ, Italy

Duration: 6 months

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT:

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is the frontline humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. On average, WFP reaches more than 160 million people with food assistance in 120 countries. Around 23,000 people work for the organization, most of them in remote areas, directly serving the hungry poor.

WFP’s Strategic Plan (2022-2025) outlines the many ways for WFP, working in synergy with others, to most efficiently and effectively save and change lives. Within this Strategic Plan, two out of the five strategic outcomes directly contribute to nutrition outcomes and, for the first time, nutrition is also a cross-cutting outcome. This inclusion of nutrition as a crosscutting priority in WFP’s 2022-2025 Strategic Plan is a commitment to maximize the contribution WFP makes to managing and preventing malnutrition and improving diets and avoiding crises and provides additional leverage to scale up efforts like food fortification. WFP’s dedication to nutrition can also be seen in its commitments at the 2020 Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit, in which it committed to increase the proportion of fortified cereals it distributes from 60 to 80% by 2024.

The WFP Nutrition Policy expanded WFP’s focus on preventing malnutrition to cover all forms of malnutrition – including undernutrition, overweight/obesity and micronutrient deficiencies – while reaffirming WFP’s support to treatment of moderate acute malnutrition, which is a critical part of the continuum of care. Further, the policy commits WFP to increasing its focus on resilience-building and stunting prevention in longer-term humanitarian responses with national governments and other partners, and aims to ensure that WFP applies a nutrition lens in all of its activities, identifying and leveraging opportunities to improve nutrition and diets, through its work. In addition, WFP’s Nutrition Division (NUT) has identified 12 Strategic Objectives (SOs) that guide its work, many of which have linkages to fortification and one of which is entirely focused on scaling up fortification. In addition, fortification plays a critical role in other SOs, such as assuring nutritional adequacy of WFP’s household food assistance and ensuring that WFP processes, policies and programmes are improved to enable access to healthier diets for all.

Fortified foods are an important element in improving nutritional adequacy of diets, which is critical to ensuring a healthy diet for all. This applies to people’s diets anywhere, and particularly where dietary diversity is not meeting food-based dietary guidelines (FBDG) and where healthy diets are unaffordable. Fortification needs to be implemented by processors of staple foods (flours, rice, vegetable oil, salt, etc) and these foods should be made available through multiple distribution channels, including the open market, to reach those in need. Furthermore, fortified foods should always be part of food assistance, whether distributed in-kind or through vouchers or cash. And, social protection, such as social assistance and school meals can also provide effective distribution platforms to specifically reach those most in need. As largest humanitarian agency worldwide, and being a major player in both food and social protection systems, WFP has a very important contribution to make to increasing availability of fortified foods and ensuring it reaches those most in need.

As part of its Nutrition for Growth (N4G) commitment, WFP intends to scale up its own use of fortified foods (increasing from 60 to 80 percent of all wheat flour, maize meal, and rice fortified) and capacity strengthening for local production of fortified foods in more than 40 countries.

This position will be responsible for supporting the WFP-DSM Partnership Manager and BMGF Project Coordinator with day-to-day activities under both grants, as well as other fortification-related activities with the Nutrition Division.

ACCOUNTABILITIES/RESPONSIBILITIES:

The consultant will work on the following topics:

1. Support the management and coordination of WFP’s food fortification portfolio globally;

2. Provide knowledge management support for WFP’s food fortification portfolio, with work spanning all six regions, including support to other divisions, RBs and COs on matters related to food fortification;

3. Support food fortification projects under WFP’s partnership with Royal DSM and with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF);

DELIVERABLES AT THE END OF THE CONTRACT:

Specific Tasks

• Support food fortification projects under WFP’s partnership with Royal DSM and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) partnerships:

• Support coordination of WFP food fortification programmes funded by the WFP-DSM and WFP-BMGF partnerships;

• DSM:

  • Provide support to WFP RBs and COs implementing fortification and related retail pilots;
• • Support Food Fortification and SNF Development Team Lead and colleagues from WFP’s Partnership division on matters related to management of this partnership and act in this capacity in their absence with support from other members of the Team;
• • Coordinate drafting, editing, and formatting of annual impact report;
• • Coordinate drafting, editing, and formatting of knowledge management and communication assets related to the partnership;
• • Provide timely responses to DSM inquiries on programme implementation;
• • Support the technical deep dive calls/bi-annual rice fortification calls with COs, RBs and DSM and ensure effective dissemination of key action points, including taking and distributing notes for the record;
• • Coordinate quarterly update calls across WFP HQ, RBs, COs, and DSM, and support COs in their preparation for these calls when requested, in addition to taking and distributing notes for the record;
• • Regularly update rice fortification projects tracker and project management tool and ensure action points are disseminated across project team;
• • Provide support to COs in the development and regular updating of their M&E systems and reporting templates;
• • Support the organization of advocacy events and provide translation services as required (French to English and vice versa);
  • Support coordination of DSM X-changers interviews, briefing, onboarding and separation;
• • Support coordination of in-kind requests from WFP Country Offices and ensure that the Standard Operating Procedures (SoP) for requesting and receiving Fortified Rice Kernels (FRK) is current;
• • Support in the development and implementation of new programmes, in partnership with key COs, throughout the duration of the MoU.

• BMGF:

• • Provide support to BMGF Project Coordinator in collecting inputs to respond to reporting requirements;
• • Support coordination of regular update calls, including taking and distributing notes for the record;
• • Support drafting, editing, and formatting of knowledge management and communication assets related to the partnership;
• • Support the organization of advocacy events related to the partnership;
• • Support the WFP RBs and COs in their implementation activities under this grant, as needed.

• Support the management and coordination of WFP’s food fortification and portfolio globally:

• Support coordination of WFP food fortification portfolio globally;

• Support maintenance of database summarizing WFP food fortification data (CSP references, distribution data, etc.);

• Support analysis of food fortification purchase and distribution data and drafting inputs for corporate reports (APR, NiN);

• Provide support for the implementation of an action plan for delivering on WFP’s food fortification N4G commitments 2022-2025;

• Participate in advocacy coalition meetings (GF-TAG, etc) and disseminate action points as required;

• Support WFP COs in development of key documents (e.g., Terms of reference) for food fortification project implementation;

• Support the FF/SNF Development Team Lead to liaise with Regional Fortification focal points, NUT Knowledge Management, and NUT Staffing Coordination colleagues to identify gaps for capacity building of food fortification staff globally (HQ, RBx, COs);

• Support coordination and mapping of opportunities for South South and Triangular Cooperation;

• Support the organization of global fortification advocacy events (workshops, webinars, conferences, etc);

• Prepare fortification reports and presentations;

• Support dissemination of key fortification documents for internal and external audiences through external fortification publications page.

• Provide knowledge management support for WFP’s food fortification portfolio, with work spanning all six regions, including support to other Divisions, RBs, and COs on matters related to food fortification:

• • Provide support in the implementation of RB and CO-led fortification programmes;
• • Map opportunities for drafting of knowledge management products related to RB and CO-led fortification programmes and work with relevant RBs and COs in the drafting and dissemination of these products;
• • Support the MIMI project funded by BMGF, by facilitating linkages between HQ-level activities and CO-level fortification colleagues of the project countries, and other activities as required;
• • Provide support to NUT units as needed, especially as related to the cross-functional nature of food fortification as relating to Nutrition Division’s different Strategic Objectives.

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:

Education:

The candidate must have an advanced degree related to public health or nutrition;

Experience:

• A minimum of 1-2 years of experience involving nutrition, food fortification, food technology, food science, food security, project planning and management, or international development and nutrition programming;

• Prior experience with WFP programmes an asset.

Knowledge and Skills:

• Strong Communication abilities to engage with various stakeholders from different sectors and backgrounds, ability to interact with leaders and external audience with maturity and tact, ability to interact with vulnerable people groups

• Collaborative spirit able to liaise with a wide range of people at all levels and across different cultures and to act with credibility and diplomacy

• Outstanding organizational and time-management skills with an ability to plan ahead, anticipate requirements, problems and obstacles, and an ability to juggle competing priorities successfully, and to work to tight deadlines

• Strong drive, self-motivated and able to work with a high degree of autonomy

• Fully committed and motivated to achieve the aims of the UN World Food Programme

• Mobility: Willing to work in multi-cultural settings and travel to different field locations and including challenging operating environments.

• Publications: Academic publications in the field of food fortification, health or nutrition a benefit.

• Must be able to speak and write fluently in English.

Languages:

A second UN language (especially French), in addition to English, would be preferred

Terms and Conditions

WFP offers a competitive compensation package which will be determined by the contract type and selected candidate’s qualifications and experience.

Please visit the following websites for detailed information on working with WFP.

http://www.wfp.org Click on: “Our work” and “Countries” to learn more about WFP’s operations.

Deadline for applications: 20 October 2023

Ref.: VA No. 829826

All employment decisions are made on the basis of organizational needs, job requirements, merit, and individual qualifications. WFP is committed to providing an inclusive work environment free of sexual exploitation and abuse, all forms of discrimination, any kind of harassment, sexual harassment, and abuse of authority. Therefore, all selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

No appointment under any kind of contract will be offered to members of the UN Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), International Civil Service Commission (ICSC), FAO Finance Committee, WFP External Auditor, WFP Audit Committee, Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) and other similar bodies within the United Nations system with oversight responsibilities over WFP, both during their service and within three years of ceasing that service.