Community Outreach Support (12 positions)

Organizational Setting

The main aim of the FAO country offices, which are headed by an FAO Representative, is to assist governments to develop policies, programmes and projects to achieve food security and to reduce hunger and malnutrition, to help develop the agricultural, fisheries and forestry sectors and to use their environmental and natural resources in a sustainable manner. 

With support of the European Union, FAO Pakistan is implementing a project “Post-floods resilient recovery and strengthening of the livestock sector in Balochistan”. The project aims to enhance food security and resilience status of the livestock farmers/households in line with the post-flood Resilient, Recovery, Rehabilitation, and Reconstruction (4R) Framework and climate smart approaches. In accordance with priorities of the Government of Balochistan set forth in its Balochistan Livestock Policy and Strategy 2020-2030, the project will focus mainly on small ruminants, and reproductive efficiency improvement in dairy. To achieve this goal, the project will build capacity of livestock farming households through a comprehensive and tailored hands-on community outreach following the Farmer Field School (FFS) and Gender Transformative approach, in a bid to improve sustainable production and productivity of husbandry in line with climate resilient approaches while creating/sustaining working opportunities with a focus on youth and women in the target districts of Balochistan. 

FAO wishes to recruit 12 experienced Farmer Field School Community Outreach Support to support integrated community outreach activities of the project geared at building capacity and empowering agro-pastoralists in their livestock husbandry practices; genetic breed improvement; disease management; improving feed resources for the small ruminants; rangeland management; preparation of safe and nutritious family food; value addition; and enhancing their opportunities for income generating activities to support their families.

The position will be level SBIII-SC6 and based in Quetta, Khuzdar, Lasbella, Jaffarabad, and Loralai in Balochistan.

Reporting Lines

Under the overall supervision of FAO Representative in Pakistan, Assistant FAO Representative – Programme and Head of Province, the incumbent will report to the Senior Programme Officer. Within the framework of a programmatic approach, the incumbent will be part of a technical team, and the role will involve close collaboration with various sectoral specialists, and project team both at the province and districts. The incumbent is expected to closely collaborate with relevant technical departments of Government of Balochistan at district level to ensure proper alignment of interventions.

Technical Focus

The position will focus on supporting implementation of the integrated community outreach activities of the project. The incumbent will directly support implementing partners for the FFS community outreach, ensuring quality assurance of the non-negotiable processes and gender transformative aspects of the approach. In collaboration with the rest of the project team, this will entail joint participatory planning, facilitating integrated capacity building interventions tailored towards empowering livestock farmers through FFS on climate smart livestock production technologies and practices; improving feed resources for the small ruminants; rangeland management; preparation of safe and nutritious family food; value addition; entrepreneurial skills and enhancing their opportunities for income generating activities to support their families.

Tasks and responsibilities

•    Oversight and quality assurance of the implementation of Letter of Agreements with service provider(s) for the FFS outreach
•    Support service provider(s) to implementation an integrated and holistic community outreach. This will entail community awareness, ground for the FFS community outreach in terms of overall ground working, planning and
•    Facilitate the service provider(s) to develop detailed but realistic community outreach plans for empowering livestock farmers through FFS and community-wide interventions
•    Coordinate routine engagements with the relevant technical departments at district level for joint planning, technical backstopping, and supervision of the community outreach activities
•    Quality assurance of the community outreach ensuring that the guidelines for implementing good quality FFS on livestock are followed, sessions systematically conducted routinely, study designs and relevant data collected, factoring in location-specific dynamics
•    Ensure all the outreach groups have the appropriate learning materials, information, extension and communication (IEC) materials and records system in place
•    Assist the FFS Specialist and other sectoral specialist in the day-to-day monitoring community outreach interventions, prepare tailored trainings for facilitators and farming communities and compile monthly monitoring sheets and accompanying MOVs
•    In liaison with the Monitoring, evaluation, accountability, and learning (MEAL) unit, collate and update monthly data from all the FFS learning activities and outreach at large into the digitalised FFS MEL information management system
•    Ensure that all requests and documentation to facilitate government counterparts supporting the project are submitted and processed in a timely manner
•    Provide routine technical backstopping to the FFS facilitators and ensure adherence to the non-negotiable principles and processes of the FFS approach to enhance knowledge and skills
•    Identify and facilitate different FFS groups to access rural financing opportunities to enhance their livelihood and market linkages
•    Keep close track and completeness of all targets, identifying strategic linkages for sustainability completeness 
•    Develop and operationalise a realistic sustainability plan for the FFS groups with clear post FFS activities
•    Support preparation and collating of work plans and progress reports (monthly, quarterly, and final) on the community outreach, case studies, and success stories
•    Ensure emerging innovations, lessons and good practices from the community outreach are documented shared with the communications team
•    Perform other related duties, as assigned by the supervisor.

CANDIDATES WILL BE ASSESSED AGAINST THE FOLLOWING

Minimum Requirements

•    Bachelor’s degree in (DVM/BS/B.Sc/MS/M.Sc/M.Phil) in Livestock/Veterinary Medicine or Animal Science; Natural Resource Management, and Agriculture or related fields.
•    Minimum of 5 years of experience in livestock management especially small ruminants.
•    Working knowledge of English and fluency in Urdu and local languages (Pashto, Balochi, Brahvi) spoken in the province.
•    National of Pakistan.

FAO Core Competencies

•    Results Focus
•    Teamwork
•    Communication
•    Building Effective Relationships
•    Knowledge Sharing and Continuous Improvement

Technical/Functional Skills

•    Proven training and practical experience in implementing Farmer Field School methodology for livestock
•    Climate Resilient Agriculture/Livestock (CRA), private sector, livestock value chain experience will be an asset.
•    Participatory approaches for rural community development
•    Proficient in basic computer skills including MS Office.
•    Good interpersonal & communication skills.
•    Strong analysis, report writing, facilitation and presentation skills.
•    Ability to work in a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic environment and rural communities.
•    Familiarity with UN systems and procedures regarding code of conduct and resource use.
•    Display initiative and take responsibility towards achieving agreed outputs within set deadlines and closely follow-up until successful outputs are achieved.
•    Understanding of the purpose and functions of technical programmes, operational guidelines and programme/project management procedures, preferably those adopted by the United Nations or FAO would be considered an added asset
•    Continue to seek new, innovative and improved methods and systems for accomplishing the work assigned.
•    Experience in developing training materials, curricula, and conducting training programs for farmers and extension workers.
•    Ability and willingness to travel and work in remote areas of project target provinces
•    Ability to work collaboratively with diverse stakeholders and teams.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION