Nutrition Coordinator at Mercy Corps

Location: Maiduguri – Borno State

Program/Department Summary

• With the insurgency affecting North East Nigeria and displacing millions of people, Mercy Corps is expanding its humanitarian programming to support the conflict-affected population in Borno. In response to the ongoing crisis, Mercy Corps is scaling-up food security, non-food items, nutrition, protection, livelihoods, and water sanitation hygiene (WASH) activities in Dikwa, Ngala, and Jere Local Government Areas in Borno State to address emergency needs.

General Position Summary

• Mercy Corps is looking for a strong Nutrition Coordinator working to improve the quality of nutrition implementation on food security and nutrition programming. This position will require for one to provide an inclusive forum for sharing, adapting, refining, and disseminating information, methodologies, tools, and promising practices on nutrition for increasing the impact of food security programming.

Essential Job Functions

• Provide input into the design of nutrition program strategies and lead the implementation of nutrition activities.
• Provides technical advice for all nutrition-related projects and activities.
• Responsible for ensuring quality through staff capacity-strengthening, supportive supervision and monitoring.
• Provide hiring managers, program managers, and program staff with explanations of the basic skills and knowledge about nutrition that staff need to carry out their work effectively.
• Integrate nutrition within other program components, notably WASH and food security. Coordinate with other health teams to ensure complementary approaches,
• Supervise ongoing implementation of maternal and child health and nutrition promotion activities, ensuring quality control.
• Provide technical advice and support to facilitate learning related to nutrition social and behavior change communication programming.
• Monitor implementation of project activities and document best practice and success stories
• Participate on design teams for new projects and provide technical advice in the implementation and evaluation of nutrition activities.
• Facilitate Mercy Corps coordination with other nutrition sector agencies, including the sharing of nutrition materials and best practices through participating regularly in Nutrition Working Group / Cluster meetings.
• Participate in developing recommendations for new areas of nutrition research and programming, and promoting innovation in behavioral interventions and communication.
• Lead the preparation of technical communication pieces related to nutrition and present findings to relevant audiences.
• Conduct himself/herself both professionally and personally in such a manner as to bring credit to Mercy Corps and not to jeopardize its humanitarian mission
• Any other duties as assigned.

Organizational Learning:

• As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities they serve, we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.

Accountability to Beneficiaries:

• Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

Knowledge and Experience

• Masters’ degree or equivalent experience in nutrition, public health, or other relevant behavioral/social science field.
• Minimum four years’ experience in nutrition and/or public health programming, policy or research, with at least two years’ experience in an international resource-challenged setting.
• Substantial experience in social and behavior change programming.
• Experience developing various web/print/social media or organizing events desired.
• Strong knowledge and understanding of nutrition and food security issues.
• Formal understanding of theories and frameworks relating to individual and group behavior change desirable.
• Hands-on experience on designing, planning, implementing and evaluating nutritional behavioral interventions and/or communication campaigns.
• Experience with nutrition needs assessments and program evaluations.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills.
• Strong interpersonal skills and ability to work as part of a team, including cross-cultural teams.
• Excellent written and spoken English and Hausa, Kanuri an advantage.

Success Factors

• The successful candidate will be capable of multi-tasking, rapid decision-making, have initiative, drive and a lot of energy, as well as high emotional intelligence, constructive mentoring skills and proven experience with capacity building.
• S/he will be committed to long-term program sustainability and the delivery of high-impact activities at the community level.
• Successful Mercy Corps team members have a strong commitment to teamwork and accountability, thrive in evolving and challenging environments, and make effective written and verbal communication a priority.
• In particular, the successful candidate will be willing to travel to locations such as Dikwa and Ngala according to the needs of the Mercy Corps program.
• This will mean sometimes staying and working in stressful environments with very basic living conditions, strictly following security protocols at all times and sometimes working long and irregular hours.
• Mercy Corps team members represent the agency both during and outside work hours. Team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner and respect local laws, customs and Mercy Corps' policies, procedures, and values at all times and in all in-country venues.