Technical Advisor I, Agriculture Livelihoods

Jan 2, 2017 | Catholic Relief Services
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The CRS Agricultural Livelihoods signature program area has a 5 year strategic goal to provide a pathway to prosperity for 2 million rural households. Working through our partner network we aim to provide poor rural farming families with the assets, skills and links to markets and services that they require in order live more dignified, prosperous and resilient lives.

The Technical Advisor will work within a global agricultural team to work with regional program staff to improve and deploy and evaluate progress with the use of a set of market-oriented extension tools, support monitoring and evaluation of value chain upgrading projects including the recently developed Coffeelands program and provide training in methods to improve the skills, productivity, market linkages and income for smallholders.

This work will combine two key areas of work, (a) to support our capacity building approaches in integrated agro-enterprise development and (b) support the monitoring, evaluation, research and learning aspects of our market linkage programs.

As part of the agricultural extension approach, CRS has identified five basic skills – that comprise the “SMART Skills” set.  These include: Group Organization, Financial Management, Marketing, Natural Resource Management and Innovation. This position will support deployment, upgrading and data management of performance for this capacity building approach.  

To support the deployment of these skills, the Agriculture and Livelihoods team has developed an extension approach that includes a combination of face-to-face and digital products that focus on e-learning, tracking service delivery and business planning and performance monitoring, known together as the Farmbook Suite. 

These tools will be disseminated across CRS to be included in all the agriculture and livelihood projects with the relevant needs.  The use of Farmbook Suite across the agency will provide a uniformed approach to building capacity for farmers who are positioned to take on market-oriented farm enterprises.

General Responsibilities: 

The Ag Livelihoods Technical Advisor will work withAgricultural Livelihoods Senior Technical Advisor for Extension Lead and Regional Technical Adviser and country programs to manage the development, implementation, and progress of Farmbook Suite.  The general responsibilities include the following: 

1. Provide both office and field support to ongoing efforts to develop a suite of data gathering and learning tools that strengthen our work in linking farmers to markets, this work will support both data gathering systems, analytics and knowledge sharing mechanisms; 
2. Support CRS staff in management of paper based and digital data information systems and support the strategic positioning of CRS Country Programs currently implementing market linkage, value chains and the newly developed Coffeelands programming
3. Analysis of the agricultural data will serve both business development and program performance evaluation of ongoing projects.
4. The role will support CRS and partner technical staff in the field to design, implement and evaluate agricultural programs that incorporate SMART skills, Value chain tool kit, eValuate and Farmbook data streams.  
5. Train CRS and partner staff in the use of data gathering and analytical tools, and also support research and learning that is related to market linkage work, including the process of skills acquisition by farmers of the best fit practices and technologies;
6. Support the development of project proposals as part of the Agricultural Livelihoods SPA Resource Acquisition Plan.
7. Support the delivery of results-based evidence in support of our lead program’s influence agenda at national, regional and global levels, including lessons learned documents, analysis of monitoring and evaluation and other project data.
8. Manage external relationships with research institutions, including the CGIAR and partner Universities and other private research organizations.
9. Support the development, implementation and management of the agricultural livelihoods MEAL system, with a focus on smart skills and value chain operations, in close collaboration with CRS MEAL team

Specific Responsibilities:

• Assist in data management across spectrum of agriculture projects.
• Continue the development and roll-out of key CRS agro-enterprise methods including the Territorial approach to Agro-enterprise development, SMART Skills, related e-learning trainings and value chain tool kit.
• Advance capacity building among CRS and partner staff, to analyze and apply feedback to refine and improve our capacity building approach, including guides, face to face training and e-learning products.
• Engage in research and data collection on the implementation of key Agricultural livelihood methods.
• Develop implementation guidelines and minimum standards for training content in key Agricultural livelihood methods and tools.
• Review, analyze and upgrade the level and quality of data collected by existing digital systems including eValuate, Savix, Farmbook and Value chain tools to inform CRS’ agricultural livelihoods on our programming.
• Manage the CRS library of training materials that support production and marketing of target value chains.
• Support on-line information sharing points and foster relationships with other partners from research, NGO’s, universities and private sector in the development of training materials and market based tools.
• Use of participatory quantitative and qualitative methods for monitoring and evaluation; design of survey instruments and knowledge of sampling methodologies; appropriate data analysis methodologies; and MEAL report writing skills
• Work with our MEAL and GKIM teams to upgrade and manage online information systems capable of handling large datasets for MEAL purposes with a strong integration of spatial data, provide support to use of key statistical analysis software (SPSS, EpiInfo, STATA, SAS, or similar) preferred
• Work as the interface between MEAL and Program staff to strengthen our ability to support project-level theories of change, results frameworks, ProFrames, logframes and other tools for logical program design, related MEAL system tools and competencies, and accompanying MEAL narratives.
• Promote knowledge management and collaborative learning processes at the project, program and institutional levels, generating robust evidence for project and programmatic learning that leads to action, decision-making and influence

Key Working Relationships:

This position will develop close working relations between PIQA’s HQ team and the global Agricultural Regional Technical Advisor network, to support an expanding number of partners from the public and private sector.   

Personal Skills:

• Excellent writing and presentation skills, strong proposal development skills.
• Strong analytical skills and ability to identify upgrading opportunities in target agricultural methods and applications
• Understanding of agricultural information technology and ability to integrate technology into program operations.
• Ability to work as part of a team to support improved program quality, with a strong focus on learning, data management and decision support.
• Ability to work under tight deadlines and maintain good relations with consortium partners.
• Ability to prepare concise documents and to clearly communicate issues identified in complex data sets.
• Ability to motivate CRS team members and partners to focus on common goals and data sharing processes. 

Agency-wide Competencies (for all CRS Staff): 

These are rooted in the mission, values, and guiding principles of CRS and used by each staff member to fulfill his or her responsibilities and achieve the desired results.

• Serves with Integrity
• Models Stewardship
• Cultivates Constructive Relationships
• Promotes Learning 

Qualifications:

• M.S/M.A. in development related field, agriculture, rural development degree     preferred.
• Data analytics (quantitative and qualitative) experience highly preferred.
• 2-5 years’ field experience in developing country
• Knowledge and experience with rural development research, agriculture, micro-finance and emergency based programs
• Experience with design, implementation, and evaluation of multi-tiered training programs
• Experience in working with data       
• Ability to support proposal development.
• Fluency in English; French language skills preferred
• Strong computer skills, and capacity to learn new programs
• Willingness to travel overseas up to 30% of time.

Disclaimer Clause: 

This job description is not an exhaustive list of the skill, effort, duties and responsibilities associated with this position.

Note: 

Must be legally authorized to work in the U.S. or work location country, at the time of application.

CRS’ talent acquisition procedures reflect our commitment to protecting children and vulnerable adults from abuse and exploitation.