Job Openings at Cuso International

  Start Date Jul  Sep 2017 (flexible)

Length of Placement 12 Months

Language Requirements English

English Reading: Level 4, Writing: Level 4, Speaking: Level 4

Language Scale: http://www.cusointernational.org/languageratingscale

Open to Canadian Citizens and Permanent Residents of Canada only

The Volunteer’s Role

• The Financial Inclusion Advisor will work with the Financial Inclusion manager, partners as well as program staff, and local youth volunteers to develop and implement defined activities to enhance the overall objectives of the financial inclusion component of the project.
• The general goal of the placement is to support the project’s efforts to strengthen the capacities of partner financial service providers (mostly microfinance banks) to develop youth inclusive, gender sensitive and environmental responsible financial products and services which will be accessible by youths for new and expanded businesses employing best practices within the natural resource sector.

As a volunteer, you will:

• Research and analyze the evolving local market for financial products and services; and identify and assess the financing needs of the project’s youth clientele and other agricultural value chain actors – with the view to providing evidence based market information to the project’s partnering financial institutions;
• Continue the work done to identify, screen and build relationships with local organizations (other microfinance institutions, banks, credit unions, guarantee funds and other potential partners) to develop and expand access to financial products and services for youth clients;

Support the implementation of capacity building activities for partnering microfinance banks, including product development;

• Support the development and initial deployment of Management Information Systems (MIS) to ensure internal and external transparency and reporting of financial performance of partner microfinance banks (Note: this activity is dependent on funds available for MIS by the banks);
• Propose new financial solutions for the project’s value chain participants such as embedded finance to youth farmers, and facilitate their implementation by designing, testing, adjusting and ensuring affordability and sustainability of those solutions;
• Work closely with the project team to increase access for youth to appropriate financial products and services through partner and nonpartner financial institutions

Essential Academic Qualifications:

• Minimum Bachelor’s degree in finance, economics or business administration or minimum three years’ experience in a related field;
• Minimum five years’ experience in bank lending, agricultural finance, microfinance, along with experience in value chain development, enterprise development, financial product designs, alternate financial solutions such community savings and lending groups and digital financial services and some exposure to investment would be an advantage;
• Experience in microfinance, enterprise development and financial products design;
• Experience in training, mentoring and institutional capacity building with financial institutions or other private sector organizations.

Essential Professional Background:

• Experience working with financial institutions to facilitate product development with focus on but not limited to renewable energy financing;
• Experience in providing capacity development training for financial institutions;
• Experience developing and delivering gender equality interventions;
• Experience working crossculturally, and within a developing country context.

Support Package

• Modest monthly living allowance (varies depending country)
• Accommodation while in placement
• Return airfare and visa/work permit costs
• Cost of required vaccinations, antimalarial medication and health insurance
• Predeparture training and incountry orientation
• Travel and accommodation for reintegration debriefing weekend
• Modest support for accompanying partners and dependents going on placement with you for 12 months or longer
• Access to Employee Assistance Program while in placement and upon return
• Cuso International assessment day (Candidates must cover the first $200 of the most costeffective travel expenses and all accommodation costs).
• Travel and accommodation for the fiveday predeparture training course and for incountry orientation

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 Start Date Jun - Aug 2017(flexible)

Length of Placement 6 Months

Language Requirements English

English Reading: Level 4, Writing: Level 5, Speaking: Level 4

Language Scale: http://www.cusointernational.org/languageratingscale

Open to Canadian Citizens and Permanent Residents of Canada only

The Volunteer’s Role
The aim of the placement is to enhance the entrepreneurship and business development services YouLead beneficiaries. The YouLead project stands for Youth Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Development. Our beneficiaries will be supported in establishing micro, small and medium (MSME) enterprises in the natural resource sector of agriculture, forestry, aquaculture, eco-tourism and renewable energy.ofAccess

The objective of this placement is:

• To apply knowledge and skills related to the concepts, principles, and methodologies of business development and value chain
• To apply higher order thinking skills (critical thinking, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, complex problem solving) to “real world” situations
• To develop career awareness, direction and exploration of vocation
• To increase skills for understanding and working with people of diverse backgrounds and cultures and to work effectively within diverse environment

As a volunteer, you will:

• Organize workshops from time to time, business plan development and implementation for partners, and project structurestrain-the-trainer’s
• Provide support for strengthening of business management capacities and their business model
• Support internal market and end market assessment of identified value chains
• Support with the pre-design of a intervention based on each identified value chain product and highlight the available business opportunities for young women and men along the value chain of identified productsmarket based
• Provide Support /coaching and mentoring of community volunteers on how to support youth entrepreneurs
• Support business development for community volunteers
• Support partner banks to develop effective system to appraise loan applications and track repaymentmicro finance
• Support the YouLead on access to finance to secure grants and funding for startup and expanded businesses of YouLead beneficiaries.taskforce
• Provide support to the business development officer to develop tools for providing business development services youth enterprises.for

Essential Academic Qualifications:
Bachelor’s Degree or its /Equivalent in Business, Marketing, Development studies or related field

Support Package

• Modest monthly living allowance (varies depending country)
• Accommodation while in placement
• Return airfare and visa/work permit costs
• Cost of required vaccinations, antimalarial medication and health insurance
• Pre-departure training and in-country orientation
• Travel and accommodation for reintegration debriefing weekend
• Modest support for accompanying partners and dependents going on placement with you for 12 months or longer
• Access to Employee Assistance Program while in placement and upon return
• Cuso International assessment day (Candidates must cover the first $200 of the most cost-effective travel expenses and all accommodation costs).
• Travel and accommodation for the five-day pre-departure training course and for in-country orientation
• Demonstrated Business Development skills and Grants management working in the Natural Resource Sector

Essential Professional Background:

• 5 years’ experience in Business Development
• A good knowledge of business start-ups approach and practice
• Strong experience in end market assessment & analysis
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Experience with gender mainstreaming
• Good communication and interpersonal skills