CARE is a leading humanitarian organization dedicated to fighting poverty and social injustice with a special emphasis on human rights, gender equality and women and girls. CARE works in a variety of contexts from protracted crises to stable development settings, as well as contexts in the nexus between these two types, and recognizes that the underlying drivers of food and nutrition insecurity are poverty, gender inequity, non-inclusive governance, poor adaptation to climate change and the inability to manage other economic and political shocks and stressors.

To address these underlying drivers of poverty, the CARE Food and Water Systems (FWS) Global Team has developed the “She Feeds the World” (SFtW) framework and the Right to Food, Water and Nutrition Impact Area Strategy (FY22-FY25), which underly all of CARE’s food and water systems (FWS) programming towards the CARE 2030 vision. This leverages CARE’s experience and tools to influence broader systems to support empowered women and youth to a) GROW food and income-generating products, recognizing that healthy ecosystems, water management and
climate resilience are critical to sustain water and grow food; b) USE resources, approaches, social protection mechanisms and technologies to reduce food loss and waste, increase WASH services, ensure nutrition; c) Buy and sell food and water-related goods and services in inclusive markets while diversifying their livelihoods and using market-based approaches. Gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls is at the center of achieving these outcomes in all of CARE’s FWS programs.
CARE commits to work with partners around the world to support 75 million people, the majority of them women and girls, to fulfill their right to food, water and nutrition as part of Vision 2030. The intent is to directly reach at least 25 million people (at least 55% of them women), and to
indirectly reach a further 50 million people by 2025

The Agriculture and Market Systems Team ( A&M) spearheads the FWS global efforts to improve women livelihoods through addressing access to productive assets and resources, increasing access to inclusive markets and reducing food loss and waste. The A&M team seeks to achieve this by developing and supporting market based approaches that increase agricultural productivity and effective linkages to markets while promoting sustainable, climate resilient production and management practices. Supporting small-scale producers to certification initiatives has been shown to be an important pathway to increasing women income and livelihoods. In most Countries where CARE works, women and small scale producers face significant challenges to increasing their productivity and engaging effectively with market. They lack access to productive assets and resources, including finance, agricultural inputs, veterinary services among others. Women and other small scale producers also face significant challenges engaging with market given their limited experience and knowledge of the market systems.

Reporting to the Director Agriculture and Markets, the STA Agriculture Food Safety and Market Systems will be a key member of the Agriculture and Market Systems Team and will play a key role in supporting the design and development of high level interventions in Agriculture and markets as well as Certification and Food Safety

A significant portion of the positions time will be spent in supporting CAREs new drive to scale up Certification within the farmer field and business school approach which is CAREs flagship approach to enhancing and increasing small scale producers knowledge and engagement in agricultural systems to reach 15 million producers globally. A Complimentary component of the certification initiatives will be focused on Food Safety to ensure small-scale producers have the knowledge, skills and resources to meet food safety and product quality assurance needs.

Responsibilities:

1. Technical Assistance to Program Implementation for FWS Programs
   • Develop and roll out Farmer field and business school Certification model and approaches as part of the FFBS scaling project.
     Promote a pilot model for FFBS certification exploring partnerships with Fair Trade America and other accreditation partners
   • Build capacity of Country teams and programs to increase opportunities for producers to engage in certification and production of high quality products for the market.
   • Develop approaches and systems for graduating FFBS participants to produce certified products. This includes consideration for quality and and volumes of produce from individual FFBS graduates.
   • Support the development of Country certification plans for FFBS participant, farmer groups, cooperatives and other collectives.
   • Conducts market assessment and other studies in different countries that seek to identify opportunities for enhanced certification, food safety
   • Support the development of tools, systems, processes and approaches that continuously improve technical excellence, in the in food safety, quality production for small scale producers particualry women.
   • Develop mechanisms that promote progress towards living incomes ( Productivity increases are measured and linked to a directional income ladder), focusing on small scale producing women.
2. Resource mobilization for Food Safety and Certification Work
   • Participate in the Capture, design and program development of USAID funded programs with specific input to food safety, quality and certification.
   • The TA Food safety and Certification will also support other FWS fundraising efforts including leveraging and growing the Farmer Field and Business Schools Scaling project with particular emphasis o growing the funding portfolio of certified products in various Countries.
   • Increase and mobilize for investments into programming from market based firms including corporations, large scale enterprises both global and Country Specific.
   • Identify and develop solid partnerships with certification, accreditation and other consumer awareness organizations including Fair Trade Rain Forest Alliance, World Union of Whole sale markets and others with the aim of increasing CARE’s visibility and support to resource mobilizations for certification.
   • Working with the Market Based approaches team, increase support to development of high quality proposals and statement of works for consulting interventions and other client services offered to Corporations,
   • Foundations and other MBA programs in food safety and certification.
   • Increase and mobilize for investment into programming market based firms including corporation, large scale enterprises both global and Country specific.
3. Knowledge Management and Learning
   • Working closely with KML team in the FWS Unit, the TA Food Safety and Certification will contribute to generating learning and technical resources that can be shared within and beyond FWS and program to support on-going implementation elsewhere, inform new program design, inform CARE’s advocacy in the food and nutritional security and advance CARE’s global work in food safety and certification.
   • Working closely with Country Office teams on program design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and capacity building.
   • Lead and motivate the team and monitor project/program activities.
   • Coordinate work with external consultants and vendors in the project.
   • Lead status meetings with country offices, providing support, guidance and responding to their concerns.
   • Produce briefs, tools and other communication materials that increase awareness and understanding of certification and other food safety issues.
4. Innovation and Partnership Development
   • Manage work-streams, closely track progress against objectives, highlighting roadblocks as soon as they arise, taking full personal ownership for high-quality, timely execution of deliverables.
   • Lead client facing meetings to provide status updates and continually adapt engagement strategy as needed.
   • Drive internal coordination with the globally dispersed CARE team, including advisors, technical leads, and country staff, to ensure timely inputs into deliverables, appropriate attendance during internal and client meetings, and adequate support throughout engagements.
   • Work closely with CARE staff across the Confederation and supply chain actors (producers, suppliers, procurement) to design ] FFBS programs that deliver both development gains and business outcomes.
   • Coordinate with MEL technical experts and client procurement practitioners to triangulate data across organizations to build the evidence base for supply chain investment.
   • Provide ongoing timely updates of project progress to FWS/CIP and other internal stakeholders.
   • Gather and analyze information, formulate and test hypotheses, translate research into recommendations for client presentations
   • Ensure that all approaches developed and promoted work to transform gender and age norms around food safety and empowering women and youth empowerment as part of innovative approaches.

Qualifications:

• Masters degree in Agribusiness, Development studies and or Economics.
• 8-10 years in Agriculture and market Systems programming with a focus on certification schemes and food safety Programming including program design experience, technical assistance and support as well as implementation.
• Experience in private sector development, business development and market linkage for Certified products from small scale producers.
• Experience providing quality technical leadership and guidance to program implementation in an international and decentralized organization setting.
  Corporate Value chain experience in Agriculture and with smallholder producers.