TECHNICAL OFFICER – GENDER AND GOVERNANCE

POSITION: TECHNICAL OFFICER – GENDER AND GOVERNANCE

Organizational Context:

CARE is a leading humanitarian organization dedicated to fighting poverty and social injustice with a special emphasis on women and girls.  CARE Tanzania is part of CARE. With the vision is to seek a world of hope, tolerance, and social justice, where poverty has been overcome and people live in dignity and security.  CARE International is a global force and a partner of choice within a worldwide movement dedicated to ending poverty.  We are known everywhere for our unshakable commitment to the dignity of people.  CARE Tanzania and partners contribute to the empowerment of the most marginalized and vulnerable rural women and girls to exercise their rights.

Job Summary

CARE’s Pathways program is a six-country program, with the overall goal of increasing poor women smallholder farmers’ productivity and empowerment in more equitable agriculture systems at scale. It is being implemented in six diverse countries – Malawi, Tanzania, Mali, Ghana, India, and Bangladesh. The program builds on and is inspired by the vital roles that women play around the world in smallholder agriculture, meeting the food and nutrition needs of their household and contributing to economic development. This program design (developed out of two years of internal inquiry into CARE’s empowerment programs) combines the themes of women’s empowerment, systems change, value chain development and sustainable agriculture, with a strong research and learning component. The program follows three mutually enforcing objectives:

1.__ Increase the productivity and empowerment of poor women farmers in sustainable and equitable agricultural systems

2.__ Enhance the scale of high-quality, women- responsive agriculture programming

3.__ Influence debates and policy dialogue on women and agriculture at local, national and global levels

Pathways activity programming follows CARE’s women’s empowerment framework, which looks for interventions to strengthen women’s agency; create gender-equitable structures (including norms); and improve equity in relationships. Working with men and boys is a critical lever of change.

In Tanzania, the Pathways teams works with groups of mainly female farmers, community-based volunteers (paraprofessionals), and the agriculture extension services to develop capacities in sustainable agriculture and marketing. Gender is fully integrated into this strategy, and a key role of frontline staff is to facilitate dialogues with farmers’ groups, community groups, and community leaders. The gender strategy focuses on challenging inequitable gender norms at household, market, and community levels. The behaviour changes being promoted through community and group dialogues are focused on equal participation of women in critical decisions (especially related to production, control over income); equal sharing of workloads; building leadership, negotiation and communications skills among women’s groups; and raising awareness of women’s land rights.

Reporting to Program Initiative Manager, the position is responsible for following through and ensuring the technical soundness of the gender design. The candidate will be responsible for Gender Mainstreaming, ensuring that Pathways gender strategy and principles are being effectively implemented and monitored. The person will continue the existing gender activities and design effective community-level activities that engage traditional authorities and men and women farmers and sensitize these groups about gender inequalities and their adverse effects. The position has to ensure that all project activities will be gender sensitive and contribute to reaching Pathways’ objectives.

S/he will be responsible for formalizing and leading an effective strategy for engaging, training, and working with men, including spouses, male champions, and community leaders.

The position will be required to oversee continuous training and capacity building programs on Gender to program staff and partner organizations in line with the program implementation approach. 

Key Responsibilities and Tasks Job Responsibility #1:  Build capacity of front-line staff to ensure integration of gender into farmer field and business school (FFBS)

30% of time

·         Develop and ensure adherence to gender-integrated work plans throughout the season;

·         Continuously build capacity and gender training to frontline and CARE staff

·         Support and supervise frontline staff to facilitate dialogues different challenges faced by men and women farmers in Farmer Field Business Schools groups

·         Promote establishment of cultural groups that convey messages related to gender equality

Job Responsibility #2: Support the local community and community leaders to understand and reflect on  gender challenges affecting their livelihood and to initiate changes at community and intra-household level

20% of time

·          Raise the capacity of local farmers to carry out advocacy work with community leaders

·         Work with program staff and partners to identify and clarify key emerging issues and facilitate development and implementation of community-level dialogues

·         Coordinating work to organize information on conservation agriculture to be used in advocacy relevant efforts

·         Coordinate capacity building activities for farmers, local leaders, traditional leaders and program staff  on gender

·         Formalize and lead strategy for engaging men for gender equality

·         Implement recommended land-rights programming

Job Responsibility #3: Development and promotion of effective behaviour change

15% of time

·         Conduct team formative analysis understanding the dynamics of women small holders to identify possible behaviors that could be  encouraged ;

·         defining communication and behavior change objective, developing framework to link how BCC activities will contribute to the programs objectives , and prioritizing communication channel  and strategy with partners

·         Train field staff and partners in implementation of strategy and communication tools.

·         Develop tools to monitor effectiveness of strategy and revise it periodically.

·         Facilitate community reviews of behaviors and planning for change using RBA

Job Responsibility #4: Foster and maintain system of reflection and learning on gender across the program

15% of time

·         Lead regular reflection sessions on gender challenges, changes, and approaches among frontline workers and core team

·         Ensure proper monitoring documentation of gender activities and outcomes

·         Documenting case studies and change stories

·         Participate in team reflections on gender findings, and promote gender-aware recommendations for relevant change in project strategies, and/or approaches

·         Practice behaviour that is consistent with CARE’s core values and promotion of gender and diversity goals; ensure that staff and frontline workers model gender-equitable practices. Job Responsibility #6: Alliance Building and Partnerships

15% of time

·         Facilitate stakeholders meetings to formulate Gender and Agriculture Learning Alliance(GALA)

·         Share Pathways-relevant lessons to Gender and Agriculture learning Alliance

·         Engage relevant partners from within CARE and outside on engagement of men and boys

·         Manage the implementation of Pathway’s women’s land-rights strategy

Job Responsibility #7: Promote Gender Equity and Diversity

All the time

·         Practice a behavior that is consistent with CARE’s core values and promotion of gender equity and diversity goals.

·         Plays a leadership role in identifying and implementing initiatives that enhance CARE’s commitment to gender and diversity

Job Responsibility #8:  Perform Other Duties as Assigned (including) ·         Perform other duties as assigned by supervisor;

5% of time

Competencies

·         Excellence: Sets high standards of performance for self and/or others; successfully completes assignments; sets standards of excellence rather than having standards imposed; ensures interactions and transactions are ethical and convey integrity.

·         Respect: Behaves in a manner that reflects a true belief in and appreciation for the dignity and potential of all human beings. Gaining other people’s confidence and setting an environment of trust and openness.

·         Diversity: Promotes, values and respects each individual’s unique qualities, background, race, culture, age, gender, disability, values, lifestyle, perspectives or interests; creates and maintains a work environment that promotes diversity.

·         Communicating with Impact: Diplomatically, logically and clearly conveying information and ideas through a variety of media to individuals or groups in a manner that engages the recipient / audience and helps them understand and retain their message.

·         Facilitating Change: Supports and manages the change process at CARE-Tanzania by developing a culture affirmative of change; encouraging others to seek and act upon opportunities for different and innovative approaches to addressing problems and opportunities; critically analyzing evolving and fluid situations; facilitating the implementation and acceptance of change within the workplace; actively engaging with resistance to change.

·         Strengthening Partnership: Identifying and utilizing opportunities within and outside of CARE Tanzania to develop effective strategic relationships between one’s area and other areas/departments/units or external organizations to achieve CARE’s objectives.

·         Planning and Organizing: Establishes courses of action for self and others to ensure that work is completed efficiently and effectively in accordance with CARE’s core values.

·         Adaptability: Effectively manages changing environments in the organization; maintains effectiveness when dealing with multiple and conflicting priorities across different cultural settings or during emergency and crisis situations.

·         Initiating Action: Takes prompt action to accomplish objectives; takes decisive action to achieve goals in times of uncertainty or in fluid contexts; is proactive.

·         Building Commitment: Uses appropriate interpersonal styles and techniques to gain acceptance of ideas or plans; modifies one’s own behavior to accommodate tasks, situations, and individuals involved.

·         Contribute to Team Success: Actively participates as a member of a team or work unit to move the team/unit toward the completion of shared goals.

·         Problem Solving: The levels of problem solving is level 1 and 2 because many of the job responsibilities are clearly defined and the problems which are likely to happens are within incumbent capacity as the program initiative is working in partnership with local government, therefore, the incumbent will expect to have support from local leader as well as CARE staff.  However, interpolative skills are required given his/her interactions with the community and determining how to engage local farmers to apply the conservation agric practices as provided by the document and ongoing learning. 

  

Qualifications (Know-How)

Education/Training

Required

·         Bachelor’s degree/diploma in Community development/gender/sociology/social marketing or related field;

·         Extensive capacity building knowledge especially with adult learning methodology

Desired:

·         Masters in Arts (MA) major in Community Development/Gender/ Sociology/Social Marketing or related field;

Experience

Required

·         A minimum of 5 years of field experience implementing gender in livelihoods or related secotral program;

·         Skills and knowledge and strategies in gender mainstreaming and community mobilization, especially in livelihoods programming;

·         Ability to take initiative and work constructively with others to ensure gender principles are integrated within all program components;

Desired

·         Knowledge on relevant national policies

·         Experience working at senior level in international NGO is desired;

·         Knowledge on finance, community development, project planning and management, administration

·         Experience working with local communities and authorities

Technical Skills

Required

·         Solid experience and understanding of gender-transformative approaches, SBCC principles, gender inequalities related to agriculture and marketing (at household, community, market levels); Knowledge and skills in gender mainstreaming in rural communities;

·         Strong ability to engage with communities and capability;

·         Strong capacity building, training and facilitation skills;

·         An approach to mirror our core values: commitment, accountability, respect, effectiveness and diversity;

·         Ability to work and communicate with a range of stakeholders including policymakers and government officials, NGOs, the media, community representatives;

·         Excellent interpersonal skills with extensive knowledge of team building;

·         Ensuring that gender and power dynamics are taken into consideration; Able to provide technical assistance in the area of gender and women’s empowerment to ensure that programmatic strategies are

·         addressing unequal power relations;

·         Proficient in Computer with knowledge in Microsoft Office Suite,  Internet usage;

·         Ability to thrive in team environments, with a strong understanding of diversity and other cultures

·         Excellent written and oral communication skills, with a fluent writing style and good knowledge and practical use of both English and Kiswahili;

Our diversity is our strength; we encourage people from all backgrounds and experiences, particularly women, to apply

MODE OF APPLICATION: Apply through hrm@co.care.org to Country Director by 14 January 2014 with a motivation letter, detailed Curriculum Vitae and 3 Referees.