Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping (VAM) Officer - NOA

ABOUT WFP

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is well known for its ability to deliver food assistance rapidly to people in need. To continue responding effectively to challenging contexts while also contributing to longer-term efforts to end hunger, WFP’s Strategic Plan focuses on better understanding of national food and nutrition security challenges and reshaping its engagement through support to national safety nets and social protection systems, to help host governments with their hunger-fighting strategies.

ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT

With a committed government, rich natural resources, and a young and diverse population, Afghanistan has the potential to make significant progress on the 2030 Agenda. However, collapse of former government and emergence of new regime, combined with challenges related to COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, demographics, gender inequalities, underemployment, and transparency issues, has dramatically impeded its efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 2 on Zero Hunger. The Pre-lean Assessment 2021 revealed that the country suffers from high, and in some cases rapidly rising, levels of food insecurity and undernutrition, and outlines a series of recommendations to address the problem.

WFP is well placed to help Afghanistan implement several of the key recommendations through their new Country Strategic Plan (2018-2022). The overarching goal of the WFP Afghanistan CSP is to support the country to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030 in a manner that also contributes, wherever possible, to the broader, longer-term transition to peace and development. Mainstreaming the cross-cutting issues of gender equality and women’s empowerment, protection, and accountability to affected populations, the CSP will focus on six, highly interrelated outcomes that span both SDG 2 and 17 (partnering for the goals). Extensive consultations with government, partners, and affected communities, helped to guide this approach which entails shifts that will allow WFP to more effectively support the country to achieve SDG 2, including a shift to a more comprehensive, national-led framing of all strategic result areas, by supporting policy coherence. This will help the Afghanistan Government to build trust and enhance its legitimacy. These shifts will also permit WFP to contribute to the broader, long-term goals of the country by operationalizing the humanitarian-development-peace nexus. Implementing the activities under the CSP requires support of several other units across all functions, including vulnerability analysis and mapping (VAM). The functional role of the VAM team is to provide the most relevant and updated information from multiple sources, both primary and secondary, to decision makers such as Government, WFP, and other partners. Key outputs from the VAM team guide operational, strategic and monitoring decisions.

JOB PURPOSE

Reporting to the Senior National VAM Officer/Head of VAM unit, and with technical and strategic guidance from the Head of Programme and other international staff, the National VAM Officer will provide/contribute to analytical and technical support to the VAME unit, Operations and Management as well as to the Food Security and Agriculture Cluster of the UN Humanitarian group.

He/she will focus on four categories of work: food security assessments and analysis, market assessment and reporting, analytical support to monitoring and evaluation, and support capacity development of WFP staff and partners.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (not all-inclusive)

1. Contribute to the development of VAM projects and activities, plans and processes, ensuring alignment with wider WFP policies and guidance. 2. Support the development of systems and tools for the monitoring and assessment of food assistance needs in line with innovative methodologies and best practice. 3. Support quantitative and qualitative analytical work in in M&E, which builds narrative on WFP’s ability to make difference in the lives of Afghans. 4. Support the management of pre-assessment baselines and post-distribution monitoring surveys and ensure quality data and communication of it with relevant stakeholders. 5. Provide technical support to mVAM call operators in conducting assessments with beneficiaries. 6. Support visualization of data using Tableau and other software and prepare reports for management and key stakeholders.

7. Contribute to the development of food security and vulnerability analysis and the preparation of timely reports on food security assessment needs in line with wider VAM policies, processes, and guidance to enable effective decision-making on the development of country strategy, policies, and programme. 8. Provide assistances on the coordination of data gathering and monitoring systems ensuring that rigorous quality standards are maintained. 9. Contribute to support the capacity building of WFP staff, partners and national government to conduct vulnerability analysis to effectively inform preparedness and response activities. 10. Provide support to relevant partners that are focusing on food security and nutrition issues to enable sharing of experience, lessons learned and best practice. 11. Support the capacity building process of VAM Assistants in the field office. 12. Contribute to emergency response capacity as required to meet emergency food assistance needs. 13. Other as required.

OTHER SPECIFIC JOB REQUIREMENTS

1. Emergency food security assessments

Design and carry out emergency food security assessments, to inform the design and targeting of WFP’s emergency operations – working in close collaboration with the focal point for WFP’s phone-based data collection system (mVAM). Specific tasks will include:

• Designing data collection questionnaires
• Designing sampling frame
• Managing data collection in (through close collaboration with WFP’s field offices)
• Carrying out data analysis
• Producing reports/bulletins to report the findings of the analysis. Particular focus should be placed on ensuring that reports are concise, visual (good use of maps, graphs, charts, and tables), and present clear operational recommendations to inform WFP programmes.
• Coordinate closely with other UN agencies, NGO and government partners on the design and implementation of these assessments – and take the lead as appropriate.

2. Market analysis

Design data collection tools and methods for market assessments and market monitoring (for both emergency and protracted relief/ recovery contexts), to inform WFP’s cash based transfers operations (i.e. distribution of cash or vouchers) - working in close collaboration with the mVAM Programme Officer and the Cash Based Transfers team. Specific tasks will include:

• Designing data collection questionnaires – including questions related to protection and women’s access to markets.
• Designing sampling frame
• Managing data collection in (through close collaboration with WFP’s field offices)
• Carrying out data analysis
• Producing reports/bulletins to report the findings of the analysis. Particular focus should be placed on ensuring that reports are concise, visual (good use of maps, graphs, charts, and tables), and present clear operational recommendations to inform WFP programmes.
• Coordinate closely with other UN agencies, NGO and government partners on the design and implementation of these assessments – and take the lead as appropriate.

3. National price monitoring system

• Produce weekly, monthly and special market price reports/bulletins by compiling the price information collected by WFP field offices.
• Continue supporting the Ministry of Agriculture to collect price data through the call centre established with WFP support.
• Manage the transition from WFP data collection to government data collection, once the Ministry’s system is well-established.

4. Build capacity amongst partners (UN, NGOs, government) and WFP staff (especially in the field offices) in market analysis

5. Participate actively in WFP Afghanistan’s Cash Based Transfers Working Group and in the Interagency Cash and Vouchers Working Group.

FUNCTIONAL CAPABILITIES

Capability Name Description of the behaviour expected for the proficiency level Food Security Analysis Demonstrates ability to conduct structured food security analysis—Identify underlying macro and micro factors impacting food security of communities and countries. Provides findings and recommendations for the programmatic response. Food Security Monitoring Manages the implementation of food security monitoring systems. Investigates any observed anomalies in the datasets and informs program management for operational response. Technical Specialized Knowledge (e.g., Economics, Statistics, Public Health, Remote Sensing, GIS, etc.) Provides managerial and technical guidance for designing and conducting analyses, including computation, interpretation, and presentation of results for food security surveys and key indicators (comprehensive food security and vulnerability surveys, food security monitoring, implementing mobile surveys, market analysis, food consumption scores, coping strategies indices. data disaggregation, etc.) Food Security Assessment Leads all aspects of surveys including design, implementation, analysis, findings and reporting. Ensures that assessment findings are easily translated into operational programmatic response. Strategic Operational Understanding Demonstrates strong understanding of country operations to participate in response analysis exercises to improve the cohesion between analytical findings and programmatic response. Constructs evidence base underlying technical and policy advice given to stakeholders.

STANDARD MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

Education: Advanced-university degree in Economics, Food Security, Statistics, Data Science, agriculture, or other related field with additional years of related work experience and/or training/courses. Master degree in the mentioned field will be preferred.

Language: Fluency (level C) in English language and in Dari and/or Pashto

OTHER: Willingness to travel throughout the country, including to remote rural areas.

DESIRED EXPERIENCES FOR ENTRY INTO THE ROLE

• Good knowledge of statistics and data analysis. • Experience in handling data using SPSS, STATA, R, etc. • Experience with data visualization (graphs, charts, infographics) using Tableau and MS Excel. • Experience in designing survey tools in smartphones using Kobo, ODK, ONA, MoDA etc. • At least 2 years of working experience on the professional level in the public/private sector, with a focus on analysis. • Good English writing skills and ability to write reports to present findings of data analysis. • Good computer literacy (including Microsoft Office suite – Word, Excel, Power Point). • Courtesy, tact and ability to work effectively with people of different national and cultural backgrounds. • Ability to maintain accurate and precise records. • Ability to design and carry out trainings for national counterparts and field staff • Ability to handle a large volume of work quickly and accurately under time constraints.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Position Title: VAM Officer

Grade: National Officer - Level B (NOB)

Contract: Fixed-term - One-year renewable

Duty Station/travel: Kabul, Afghanistan with travel inside Afghanistan and occasionally internationally

WFP Work Envirionment

WFP is committed to ensuring that all its workplaces are free from abuse, offensive behaviour, harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. WFP is also committed to promoting a work culture in which every employee understands, and is able to carry out, his/her personal responsibilities for maintaining the dignity of work colleagues. WFP seeks to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women. We believe our mission of fighting global hunger worldwide can only be achieved if women, men, girls and boys are offered equal opportunities in terms of access to resources and services and participation in decision making roles.

Female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS

10 October 2021