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WFP celebrates and embraces diversity. It is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all its employees and encourages qualified candidates to apply irrespective of race, colour, national origin, ethnic or social background, genetic information, gender, gender identity and/or expression, sexual orientation, religion or belief, HIV status or disability.
ABOUT WFP
The United Nations World Food Programme is the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. The mission of WFP is to help the world achieve Zero Hunger in our lifetimes. Every day, WFP works worldwide to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry and that the poorest and most vulnerable, particularly women and children, can access the nutritious food they need.
ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT
In 2022, the world faced a historic food and nutrition crisis. Continuing in 2024, an estimated 29 million children will suffer from wasting in 15 of the worst-affected countries. In the same countries, 156 million people are estimated to face crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity, which is an 83 per cent increase from 2019 (before the global pandemic). The number of people living in emergency and catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity also saw a significant increase and represents a deterioration of the situation since 2019.
In these humanitarian contexts, continued efforts for the early detection of children with wasting, and their management remain critical; likewise essential are actions to reduce the incidence of children whose nutrition situation may deteriorate into wasting.
As a United Nations (UN) agency reaching an estimated 150 million nutritionally vulnerable and food-insecure people each year, WFP plays a critical role in multi-stakeholder efforts to address malnutrition. In 2023, over 27 million children under the age of 5 and pregnant and breastfeeding women and girls were assisted through WFP supported nutrition-specific programmes that aim to prevent undernutrition and manage moderate wasting across 52 countries.โ
The 2023 WHO Guideline on the Prevention and Management of Wasting and Nutritional Oedema together with the Global Action Plan on Child Wasting (GAP) provide an opportunity to foster new program approaches to ensure that as many children as possible benefit from coordinated efforts to prevent and address wasting. WFP with its partner UNICEF has developed a joint strategic approach to accelerate programmatic shifts in humanitarian and fragile contexts based on this new WHO Guideline. WFP and UNICEF will work together to provide a combined package of interventions to address child wasting. The joint approach emphasizes the importance of addressing maternal nutrition, elevates attention given to preventive actions as part of every program response and to increasing convergence and coverage to reach those populations most vulnerable and hardest to reach.
This approach will be implemented through a phased three-year transition plan (2024-2026) in 15 priority countries (Haiti, Burkina Faso, Chad , Mali , Niger, Nigeria, Ethiopia , Kenya , Somalia , South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo , Madagascar , Afghanistan , Yemen); supporting governments and partners incorporate evidence-based programmatic shifts in alignment with the WHO Guideline.
WFP in these countries will implement shifts in programs to address child wasting and maternal malnutrition in collaboration with its key collaborators , supported through the respective Regional Bureaus and joint actions taken at global level. The global actions include evidence generation through strong monitoring and evaluation or operations research, nutrition vulnerability analysis, documentation and sharing of success and lessons learnt from new program approaches, joint advocacy and supply chain optimisation of specialised nutritious foods.
JOB PURPOSE
The overall purpose of this assignment is to steer the WFP contribution of the joint transition plan of child wasting towards its intended outcomes by engaging proactively and supporting constructively the various stakeholders involved.
The consultant will work in the Program Policy Support Unit of WFPโs Nutrition and Food Quality Service in headquarters in Rome. S/he will report directly to the lead of the Child Wasting and Maternal Nutrition team.
The consultant will work in close collaboration with a variety of stakeholders such as colleagues across the Nutrition and Food Quality Service, with WFPโs Regional Bureaux and selected country offices, and with counterparts in UNICEF at global level.
He/she will be required to travel periodically to support Regional Bureaux or high priority countries that are part of the transition plan on child wasting.
KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (not all-inclusive)
The consultant will coordinate and manage the joint transition plan on child wasting to ensure that respective country offices are effectively supported and expected results across agreed areas of collaboration are achieved. This includes:
1. Stakeholder engagement
A) Establish clear coordination structure and streamline internal communication between Headquarter, Regional Bureau, and Country Office nutrition teams, including:
B) Support coordination structure and external communication between WFP, UNICEF, and other stakeholders as required., including:
2. Change management and project coordination
This position will strongly support change management across different levels of the organization in relation to the ways of working with UNICEF on the prevention and management of wasting and maternal undernutrition. Tasks include strategizing and implementing change, as well as coordinating projects and collaborating with stakeholders.
Follow, document and visualize progress on the transition plan with strong focus on programmatic shifts and diversity of approaches on child wasting and maternal undernutrition at country level, liaising with Regional Bureau focal points and Country Offices, as needed Support the establishment of systems and processes to facilitate coherency and inputs to donor reports across Country Offices and Regional Bureaus in collaboration with the Headquarters Strategic Engagement Unit. C Coordinate and lead the donor reporting at global level.
3. Strategic and overall support to Regional Bureaus and Country Offices
4. Visibility, Communication, and Advocacy
5. AOB