Livelihoods Advisor at PACT

Summary:
The livelihoods advisor is responsible for providing technical leadership to the development of strategies, guidelines and manuals, and rolling out of these to small-scale artisanal miners and their families in order to increase their capacity to meet basic needs and have an opportunity to engage in alternative livelihood activities. The Livelihoods Advisor reports to the project director.

Position summary:

•     The goal of the “Giving Voice and Improving Economic Potentials of Small Scale Miners in Northern Nigeria” project is to improve the capacity of small scale miners to cater to their socio economic needs through sustainable utilization of natural resources.
•     As a key staff member on the project, the Livelihood Advisor is responsible for providing technical leadership to the development of strategies, guidelines and manuals, and rolling out of these to ensure that small-scale artisanal miners and their families have increased and ongoing capacity to meet their basic needs and have an opportunity to engage in alternative livelihood activities.
•     The post holder will be responsible for organizing, facilitating and delivering trainings in the areas of economic strengthening, value chain development, improved market access, savings and financial management, and business development.
•     The post holder will lead the design, planning and implementation of technical interventions to that aim to enable artisanal and small scale miners to maximize the economic benefits from mining’s unsustainable and short term resources and invest in their futures. In order to improve the enabling environment in the country, the position holder will network, share and coordinate with all stakeholders including miners associations, micro and small enterprise development associations, microfinance institutions, and relevant government units.
•     He/ She will ensure that the livelihoods interventions are performed as planned and to bring about the desired impact through monitoring, evaluation, research and documenting lessons learned.

Specific duties and responsibilities:

•     Leads the development of strategies, approaches, systems and guidelines to ensure that households caring for highly vulnerable children have increased capacity to meet the basic needs of children and supports self-reliance;
•     Defines and executes economic strengthening models, standards, elaborates steps to meet the standards, and mobilizes support. Defines and executes economic strengthening monitoring systems and development of tools to track progresses,
•     Organizes and delivers training courses and/or arranges for the delivery of training programs aimed at partner staff including government and NGO staff in Economic Strengthening strategies, approaches systems; livelihood pathways, IGA, and other related areas;
•     Initiates and leads market assessments, value chain analysis and community led market assessment and other comparative analysis on different economic strengthening models, microfinance institutions operation systems, etc and share results with wider audiences in and outside the program to enhance program quality;
•     Keeps up to date with developments in the sector, including best practice examples within the country and internationally;
•     Develops capacity of staff on Economic Strengthening models, IGA selection, planning and management, etc and provide technical assistance to the partners on the rollout;
•     Advises the project leadership on issues related to livelihood improvement/economic strengthening for better decision making;
•     Reviews and keeps updated in Government of Ethiopia policies and practices in the fields of livelihood, and ensures an active information flow for better practices;
•     Meets and works with policy makers such as government officials to facilitate better understanding and coordination among the actors in improving policy environment for Livelihood improvement for small scale and artisanal miners and their families
•     Organizes and facilitates presentations, reports and other documentation on related training events and field program operations.
•     Ensures that implementation of field programs proceeds according to approved plans and in accordance with set standards and guidelines;
•     Liaises and coordinates with Pact country and home office technical specialists and program team for integration, synergy and technical support;
•     Supports external and internal project reviews for higher-level reflective practices;
•     Works with Results and Measurement team to undertake project to identify indicators, conduct baseline studies, annual reviews, midterm assessments and final evaluations;
•     Reviews project assessment reports, compiles and shares lessons for further improvement and for future considerations.

Qualifications:

A. Education:

•     Post graduate Degree in Economics, Development Studies, Enterprise Development, International Development or other closely related field.
•     Academic work and published reports on microenterprise development, micro finance, business development, livelihood, value chain and income generating areas in Ethiopia

B. Experience:

•     10 or more years of work experience, at least 5 years with NGOs in all or most of the fields of economic strengthening, microenterprise development, value chain, livelihoods.
•     Experience should include that on development of strategies, guidelines and approaches; market assessments, conducting surveys; facilitating training, field program design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
•     Experience in the mining sector and with NGOs.

C. Technical skills:

•     Productive personality traits and firm belief in teamwork, gender equality, participatory approaches  
•     Training planning and delivery skills.   
•     Highly developed computer skills (Word processing, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.);  
•     Excellent written and verbal communication in English Language;

D. Competencies:

•     Respect, accountability, courage, excellence, building partnership, building commitment, contributing to team success, innovation, pro-active, problem solving, analytical ability, a self-starter.