Programme Assistant SC-5 (Engagement and Empowerment)

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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 United Nations World Food Programme is the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. The mission of WFP is to help the world achieve Zero Hunger in our lifetimes. Every day, WFP works worldwide to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry and that the poorest and most vulnerable, particularly women and children, can access the nutritious food they need.

ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT

The World Food Programme (WFP) embraces the ‘Changing Lives’ vision set in the 2030 Agenda for a world free from hunger in a context of equitable and environmentally responsible sustainable development. To achieve this, WFP is working across sectors to ensure that individuals and their communities have sufficient nutritious food. This includes improving agricultural techniques, strengthening local livelihoods, promoting adaptation to climate change, and ensuring children and pregnant and breastfeeding women have the nutrients they need.

To achieve this requires individual, communities and policy makers to make changes to their behaviours. However, the traditional approaches of informing, educating and encouraging are insufficient to achieve long-term behavioural changes. WFP recognises that there needs to be a shift to a focus on supporting good nutrition by helping people make healthier choices and ensuring those healthy choices are valued and accessible. There is also a need to focus behaviour change efforts across the whole food value chain activities to create greater economies of scale and consistent production of nutritious foods and to ensure that effective transitions from social safety nets to employment and greater self-reliance.

The EE Unit aims to maximise the effectiveness of behavioural change programmes through policy, research and practice for nutrition and food security and cross-cutting programme areas in WFP Armenia. The EE Unit will work with local communities, partners, stakeholders, and WFP teams to develop creative, consumer-focused, and evidence-based programmes which drive positive and sustained behavioural and social change among the at-risk population in Armenia and improve nutrition outcomes.

To support WFP’s behaviour change work, WFP is looking for a motivated and entrepreneurial behavioural scientist to support their new Engagement and Empowerment (EE) Unit. They should be creative and passionate about being a part of a first-of-its-kind Unit within WFP. They will help shape the EE Unit’s work, and work across other WFP Units to make behavioural science research, theory and practice a core part of what WFP Armenia does.

JOB PURPOSE

The Programme Assistant is responsible for operational support of the Food Value Chain Unit to ensure the smooth implementation of projects within the full Food Value Chain Portfolio. Three are three main pillars of support; i) Implementation support, ii) business process support, iii) information management support. To perform specialized and/or standardized policy and programme-related processes and activities to support the effective delivery of assistance packages.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (not all-inclusive)

1. Capture critical data and support in translating audience insights into actionable interventions.
2. Support developing well-crafted research and evaluation plans, write surveys and discussion guides, and recruit, collect and conduct data analysis and preparation of reports supporting alignment with wider programme policies and guidelines.
3. Craft personas and segments, and journey maps to communicate insights across the different WFP Units.
4. Support communication activities with stakeholders and the community to co-create and pre-test intervention ideas.
5. Collaborate with other staff across WFP to support the use of behavioural science across the organisation.
6. Provide project management and/or general office support following established targets and WFP’s policies and procedures.
7. Provide project management and/or general office support following established targets and WFP’s policies and procedures.
8. Other tasks as required.

STANDARD MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

Education: Completion of secondary school education. Relevant Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in behavioural or social science, including behavioural economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, human geography, and marketing is desirable.

Experience: 4 or more years of experience of conducting social science research, including qualitative research and evaluation projects, statistical analysis and data management, out of which 2-3 years’ experience of applied research and innovation and of applying behavioural or social science to real-world problems. Experience of behavioural analytics is not essential, but an asset.

Knowledge and Skills: Proficient in the use of office equipment and computer software packages, such as Microsoft Word and statistical packages such as SPSS or STATA. A rigorous approach to considering cross-cultural, gender and personality differences in the development and implementation of effective behaviour change programmes. Ability to clearly communicate behavioural science to non-psychologists/ social science specialists. Community and audience focused – ability to show listening, empathy and communication skills. Willingness to travel within Armenia. Strong analytical, written and oral communication skills, excellent interpersonal skills and ability to work in a team. Ability to work under pressure and meet tight deadlines.

Language: Fluency in Armenian, and highly competent in the English language; working knowledge (level B) of Russian language is desired.

4Ps CORE ORGANISATIONAL CAPABILITIES

Purpose

• Understand and communicate the Strategic Objectives: Helps teammates articulate WFP’s Strategic Objectives.
• Be a force for positive change: Suggests potential improvements to team’s work processes to supervisor.
• Make the mission inspiring to our team: Explains the impact of WFP activities in beneficiary communities to teammates.
• Make our mission visible in everyday actions: Articulates how own unit’s responsibilities will serve WFP’s mission.

People

• Look for ways to strengthen people's skills: Trains junior teammates on new skills and capabilities.
• Create an inclusive culture: Seeks opportunities to work with people from different backgrounds.
• Be a coach & provide constructive feedback: Serves as a peer coach for colleagues in same area of work.
• Create an “I will”/”We will” spirit: Tracks progress toward goals and shares this information on a regular basis with supervisor.

Performance

• Encourage innovation & creative solutions: Explores ways to consistently be more efficient and accurate in own areas of work and shares new methods of work with colleagues.
• Focus on getting results: Focuses on getting results and tracks trends in completion rates for own tasks to identify opportunities for efficiency.
• Make commitments and make good on commitments: Takes responsibility for own tasks and notifies supervisor as soon as possible of potential delays in meeting deadlines or commitments.
• Be Decisive: Independently decides what action to take when faced with critical choices in the workplace or in dangerous situations in the field.

Partnership

• Connect and share across WFP units: Suggests opportunities for partnering with other units to supervisor.
• Build strong external partnerships: Identifies opportunities to work with colleagues and partners in the field towards common goals.
• Be politically agile & adaptable: Develops an understanding of the value of WFP’s teams and external partners in fulfilling team’s goals and objectives.
• Be clear about the value WFP brings to partnerships: Aligns own activities with supervisor’s priorities to fulfill internal and external partner needs.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Contract Duration: 12 months with possibility to extend

Applications must be submitted online through WFP e-Recruitment System.

Internal WFP staff can access the VA through the internal WFP CAREER page via the link: http://newgo.wfp.org/services/e-recruitment

Make sure that you answer all mandatory questions accurately and to upload your updated CV in English.

Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.

The successful candidate will have to be vaccinated against the COVID-19 to be able to perform his/her duties. The UN strongly recommends UN personnel, and their dependents receive a COVID-19 vaccine that has been approved by WHO.

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS

Interested candidates are invited to submit their application not later than Friday, 15 April 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.