Gender and Social Inclusion Advisor at Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture Feed the Future Modernizing Agriculture Activity: (Deadline 22 February 2023)

Gender and Social Inclusion Advisor at Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture Feed the Future Modernizing Agriculture Activity: (Deadline 22 February 2023)

USAID/Rwanda Modernizing Agriculture Activity

Gender and Social Inclusion Advisor

CNFA

CNFA is a not-for-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., dedicated to stimulating economic growth in the agricultural sector by nurturing entrepreneurship, private enterprise, and market linkages. CNFA specializes in fostering private sector investments in training, new technologies and marketing as a means to increase the overall competitiveness of agricultural value chains and rural development, to increase people’s incomes, to develop skills in the rural workforce, and to facilitate exports.

Program Description USAID/Rwanda Modernizing Agriculture Activity

The purpose of the Modernizing Agriculture Activity (ModAg) is to support increased agriculture productivity and income, access to finance and markets, and access and consumption of nutritious food products in Rwanda, while increasing the resilience of the agriculture and food systems to the changing climate. To achieve this goal, the Activity will sustainably increase agricultural productivity, increase access to finance for farmers and agribusinesses, improve producers’ market outcomes, and strengthen the enabling environment to foster market-driven outcomes in agriculture.

Position Description

The Gender and Social Inclusion Advisor will lead efforts to operationalize gender and social inclusion equality throughout programming. The Advisor will work closely with the 4 Component Leads (productivity, access to finance, market and nutrition development, and enabling environment facilitation) to ensure gender and social inclusion principles are integrated into all Activity approaches and interventions, adhering to USAID and global best practices. S/he will lead outreach efforts to identify root causes of exclusion, and enable project participants (e.g. market actors, financial institutions, government agencies, etc.) to collaboratively identify the mutual benefits of including women, youth, persons with disabilities, and other marginalized groups as suppliers, customers, clients, etc.  S/he will design community-led empowerment approaches and interventions that use principles of inclusion to increase income, nutritious food access and affordability and improve nutrition status of women, youth, persons with disabilities, and other marginalized groups in a gender-equitable way. S/he will work with the MEL Director to ensure that gender and social inclusion concerns are considered in into the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Plan. The Gender & Social Inclusion Advisor is based in Kigali.

Duties and Responsibilities

The main duties of the Gender & Social Inclusion Advisor include, but are not limited to:

• Provide strategic leadership and vision to mainstream gender and social inclusion throughout all project activities;
• Lead efforts to build the capacity of program staff and other key stakeholders including market actors and government partners to mainstream gender and social inclusion;
• Collaborate with all project staff, but principally the 4 Component leads, to ensure activity design and implementation adhere to gender and social inclusion principles;
• Conduct trainings and Trainings of Trainers (ToT) for program staff and BDS providers to support the development and implementation of gender and social inclusion approaches to ensure women, youth, persons with disabilities and other excluded groups are included in the market system;
• Use relevant USAID-approved tools and methodologies to promote gender and social inclusion within activity design, implementation, monitoring, and among relevant stakeholders;
• Define areas/triggers of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in project implementation and develop strategies to mitigate and/or respond to GBV issues that may rise as unintended consequences of women’s economic empowerment and access to finance interventions;
• Promote male and youth engagement and introduce notions of positive masculinity regarding gender norms and roles in agriculture, agribusiness, finance, nutrition, and policy;
• Design and implement tools to understand women’s roles in agriculture – including their decision-making over what is produced, why, and how through increased access to assets, inputs, and services;
• Design interventions to increase women and vulnerable people’s access to opportunities to generate income; increase women’s participation in decisions on the use of household income to purchase nutritious foods and promote a more equitable division of time and labor
• Collaborate with the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Unit to ensure that the outcomes and impact of the gender and social inclusion approaches are measured and evaluated for constant learning and improvement;
• Promote and support the use of gender- and disability-inclusive standard qualitative and quantitative indicators;
• Document success stories;
• Maintain and develop strong relationships with relevant stakeholders including by representing the Activity at the technical working groups, among relevant government ministries and staff, and collaborating with other implementing partners.
• Contribute to timely, accurate and appropriate reporting of program activities and results to the donor, including progress reports and annual reports;
• Undertake other assignments or tasks at the request of the Chief of Party.

Qualifications

• At least 5 years’ professional experience in designing, managing, and implementing development programming, with a focus on gender and social inclusion in Rwanda;
• A minimum of a Master’s degree in a relevant subject or a Bachelor’s degree with an additional four years (making 9 years) of relevant technical work experience in gender studies, international development, or other related field is required;
• Demonstrated experience providing technical assistance to support gender and social inclusion in USG- funded projects, agriculture or economic development projects preferred;
• Experience in the development and implementation of gender and social inclusion training for international organizations, NGOs, or other civil society organizations;
• Understanding of the constraints that prevent women, youth, and persons with disabilities from integrating into market systems;
• Familiarity with USAID tools and methodologies is highly desirable;
• Familiarity with nutrition sensitive and climate smart agriculture concepts is highly desirable;
• Demonstrated ability to interact and communicate with wide range of stakeholders both verbally and in writing is required;
• Strong verbal and written skills in English are required. Knowledge of French and Kinyarwanda is an asset.

Application Instructions

All interested and qualified Candidate can send their application (motivation letter, updated CV, certificates and references) documents to: [email protected] not later than 22nd February 2023 at 6:00 PM. Please quote the job title in the subject.  Only candidates selected for interview will be notified.