Nutrition Facilitators for Feed the Future Rural Resilience Activity (RRA) Program at Mercy Corps

Program Overview

• The Feed the Future Nigeria Rural Resiliency Activity (hereafter referred to as the Activity) is a five-year, initiative funded by USAID covering the nine States of Northeastern, Northcentral and Southeast Nigeria. The Activity facilitates economic recovery and growth in vulnerable, conflict-affected areas. Especially in Northeastern Nigeria (NEN), its purpose is to sustainably move People out of chronic vulnerability and poverty through expanded economic opportunities.
• The overarching approach involves strengthening resilience capacities at household, community, and market-systems levels to ensure the sustainability of poverty reduction and economic recovery efforts. Targeting 540 000 individual participants including farmers, MSMEs, youth, women, and children across nine States, it is being implemented by Mercy Corps In partnership with Save the Children International and International Fertilizer Development Center.
• The Activity's hypothesis that "if it strengthens the resilience capacities of conflict-affected households, communities and market systems using market-led approaches layered with complementary investments in humanitarian assistance, then there will be sustained improvements in the exchange of goods and services within Northeastern Nigeria ultimately leading to sustainable reduction of vulnerability and poverty for households and communities, thereby contributing to economic recovery and growth." Increasing resilience capacities of households, communities, and market systems is central to the strategy and approaches because with increased resilience capacities enable households, communities, and market systems to absorb, adapt, and transform in the face of shocks and stresses.

General Position Summary

• The Nutrition Facilitator will assist in the mobilization of program participants and setting up of mother-to-mother and father-to-father nutrition support groups in their community (number of groups per community may vary due to population), work with community structures to conduct nutrition sensitization and trainings to the nutrition support groups including households, conduct malnutrition screening including referral of malnutrition cases to health facilities for treatment, monitor all nutrition related activities as well as provide any other support toward achieving nutrition objectives.

The Nutrition Facilitator will:

• Oversee coordination of community participants and setting them up into various nutrition support groups within the community.
• Supervise and monitor implementation of all nutrition related activities in their community.
• Streamline nutrition education through multiple stakeholders; conduct nutrition training for women, men, male and female youth groups using IEC materials provided by the activity.
• Administer the nutrition counselling cards to women.
• Increase demand, through sensitization for locally produced nutritious foods.
• Support improvements in food storage, processing, and preservation capacities in households.
• Work with processor groups chain to reduce nutrient loss and increase year-round availability.

(Production, harvesting, storage, transport, processing, and marketing)

• Provide nutrition and health education to caregivers.
• Promote men's involvement in nutrition promotion at household level by promoting the importance of buying a diverse food basket year-round and changing behaviors to allow women and children to consume quality diet.
• Promote timesaving technologies for the production, processing, or preparation of food to enable women spend more time in the care of their children, for example, technologies designed to improve water access, ease food preparation, or reduce the need for cooking fuel.
• Support households' off-farm revenues. Given the high seasonality of certain agricultural regions, an additional off-farm income is more likely to contribute to the regular purchase and consumption of nutritious food all year-round.
• Conduct or facilitate growth monitoring and malnutrition screening especially for pregnant women, lactating mothers, and children using the Mid-upper Arm Circumference (MUAC) and weighing scale.
• Conduct referral of malnourish children including pregnant and lactating mothers for treatment at health facilities using a referral form.
• Conduct food demonstrations at community level through use of locally available foods.
• Ensure record of beneficiaries reached and aggregate data for reporting.
• Work with health workers at the community where available to deliver nutrition services to program participants.
• Any other duty as may be required by the supervisor.

Nutrition Facilitators’ Key Deliverables:

The Nutrition Facilitator will:

• Submit soft copy of data for activities conducted weekly via a designated email or WhatsApp group.
• Submit hard copies of weekly activities data every Month end at nearest Mercy Corps office in their State.
• Submit timesheet and participants attendance on a monthly basis.

Requirements

The Ideal candidates should possess the following Qualifications:

• A minimum of ND / NCE, Bachelor's Degree or equivalent.
• Excellent Communication skills.
• A demonstrated ability to multitask and process information into action in a timely manner.
• Ability to have a team drive.
• Fluency in English Language, Hausa and any other language spoken in AdamawaState.
• Candidates with nutrition background or experience will have an added advantage.