Innovative Financing Jr. Venture Consultant
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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, colour, national origin, ethnic or social background, genetic information, gender, gender identity and/or expression, sexual orientation, religion or belief, HIV status or disability.
ABOUT WFP
The World Food Programme (WFP) is the leading humanitarian organization saving lives and changing lives, delivering food assistance in emergencies, and working with communities to improve nutrition and build resilience. We are currently seeking to fill an Innovative Financing Junior Venture Consultancy position in the INKA division, based in Munich, Germany.
Brief description of WFP Innovation Accelerator, INKA:
The World Food Programme (WFP) is the United Nations frontline agency fighting hunger. WFP reaches more than 100 million people every day - delivering food assistance in emergencies and working with smallholder farmers, communities, and governments to improve nutrition and build resilience.
The WFP Innovation Accelerator was named by Fast Company as Most Innovative Non-Profit Organization 2021 for its work in identifying, nurturing, and scaling disruptive start-ups and innovations to end global hunger. Based in Munich, Germany, the Innovation Accelerator provides WFP employees and start-ups with funding, hands-on support, and access to WFP’s global operations. Through the Accelerator, WFP is leveraging unprecedented advances in digital innovation - such as mobile technology, artificial intelligence, and blockchain - and new business models to transform the way it serves vulnerable communities across the world. In 2021, Accelerator supported innovations that positively impacted the lives of 9 million people globally. Most recently, the Accelerator runs programs for external partners such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others
More information here: http://innovation.wfp.org and https://youtu.be/OnKkQlRdh2c.
General Information:
- Title of Post: Innovative Financing Junior Venture Consultant
- Unit: Innovation Accelerator, Innovation and Knowledge Management Division (INKA)
- Country: Germany
- Duty Station: Munich
- Initial contract duration: 5 months (extendable)
- Expected Start Date: 01.12.2022
KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (not all-inclusive)
The Consultant, reporting to the Head of Innovative Finance and Venture Launchpad, is expected to:
1) Foster the development and implementation of the Accelerator’s innovative financing models, with a particular focus on helping to build the Accelerator’s and WFP’s impact investing mechanisms to fund impact at scale;
- Conduct landscape mapping to further inform WFP impact investing activities and support relationship building with external investor partners to help with fundraising efforts for the WFP funding mechanisms as well as direct capital raising by the innovations.
- Provide support to deliver, design and implement selected innovative financing or other strategic ventures throughout ideation, pilot and scale-up phases, contributing to the ventures’ launch and growth.
- Support the development of all the necessary innovative financing venture documentation and processes, including preparing agreements with third party organisations, as appropriate;
Support daily the selected innovative financing or other strategic ventures’ operations ranging from the attraction of grant and micro-loans funding to their investment and the corresponding impact measurement and evaluation, reporting, and communication;
2) Support innovations and other Accelerator teams with investment readiness, other innovative financing activities to accelerate their path to scale and to advance toward Zero Hunger and other Sustainable Development Goals:
Support the digital and social media strategy of selected innovative financing ventures;
- Design and implement the communication strategy to launch the innovative financing projects towards internal stakeholders, donors, and impact investors, as appropriate;
- Evaluate and select appropriate communication channels such as internal tools, social media, and other platforms and write compelling copy for promotional materials and online advertising;
Engage and collaborate with all necessary internal and external stakeholders (including WFP country and field offices, finance, partnerships, legal) to gather needed input, secure internal support and approval, and launch the innovative financing or other strategic ventures;
3) Support the Innovation Accelerator’s strategy deployment and operations:
Provide investment readiness and venture building support and coach project teams from ideation to implementation (as applicable), using methodologies such as human-centered design, lean start-up, project management, and business modeling;
- Support all necessary internal stakeholders on topics related to innovative financing ventures and support the building of strong external partnerships within the Innovative Financing and venture building ecosystem globally;
- Support the analysis and content preparation for presentations and management meetings on innovative financing and other priority topics;
- Support other core processes of the WFP Innovation Accelerator (e.g. innovation sourcing; innovation bootcamps; sprints programme; scale-up enablement; innovation services; communications and knowledge management) as required, and, from time to time, support the Head of the Innovation Accelerator and the Director of Innovation and Knowledge Management with any other activities as required.
STANDARD MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
Education: Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration or equivalent. Master’s degree a plus.
Experience: At least 2 years of international experience in a start-up role, start-up accelerator, innovations in private businesses, or innovations in the humanitarian or international development sector. Experience in innovative financing or microfinance is a plus.
Languages: Fluency in oral and written English is mandatory. Intermediate knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish) or Portuguese (one of WFP’s working languages) is a plus.
REQUIRED SOFT SKILLS | WFP COMPETENCIES
- Experience in innovation project life cycle - from ideation, minimum viable product, testing, prototyping, and implementation - and human-centred design;
- Experience in microfinance, crowdfunding platforms, preferably related to crowdlending;
- Excellent communication/presentation skills, with the ability to write strategy documents, to develop business plans and to write and deliver presentations;
- Interest in initiatives focused on financial inclusion, microfinance and resilience programmes;
- Passion and understanding of technology innovations (e.g. digital payments, crypto assets) and business model innovations (e.g. innovative finance, venture capital, impact bonds);
- Experience and knowledge of the digital marketing tools and channels;
Worked cross-functionally and get things done in an agile and hands-on way;
Experience working in a large scale-organization or with a client/in partnership with a large-scale organization;
- Proven track record of driving projects - effectively delivering impactful elements of projects in a fast-moving environment, ideally for new businesses, new business models, start-ups etc.;
- Collaborative spirit, able to partner with a wide range of people at all levels and across different cultures and to act with credibility and diplomacy;
- Self-motivated and able to work with a high degree of autonomy;
- Sets high-level of ambition for the project and own work to achieve impact for the people we serve;
- Fully committed and motivated to achieve the aims of the UN World Food Programme
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 website 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
Closing date: 29 September 2022
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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.