Consultant – Country Coordinator: Civil Society Organisations for Scaling Up Nutrition

Organisational Background

Zambia CSO-SUN Alliance is a movement of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) working to raise the profile of nutrition on the national development agenda. We are a part of the Global Scaling up Nutrition (SUN) movement founded on the principle that all people have the right to food and good nutrition. As an Alliance, we focus our attention on the first 1000 most critical days, a window of opportunity from pregnancy until a child’s second birthday. During this period, good nutrition has the greatest impact on preventing maternal and infant mortality, and developing a child’s cognitive and physical capacity.

Our role as a civil society is to raise awareness, and pressurise government and others to ensure much better funded and broad scale effective programmes to tackle under nutrition. We intend to achieve this by mobilizing, coordinating and building the capacity of Civil Societies to influence national efforts through constructive dialogue, advocacy with stakeholders, including the Government, donors and private sector, thereby contributing to improved leadership and accountability towards the national SUN/ 1000 days movement. Furthermore, we enable Zambian CSOs to adapt and incorporate relevant positive lessons learnt from other countries.

Our vision is to achieve a Zambia where every mother and child is assured of sufficient Nutrition.

Overall Purpose of the job

The Head of Programs will oversee the implementation of activities on all current running grants under the CSO-SUN Alliance. To provide overall direction of programme implementation and maintain local and international networks in order to achieve the mandate of the CSO-SUN Alliance.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Prepares in liaison with the board Organisational Work plan’s and budgets, derived from the CSO-SUN strategic plan, researched issues, needs and priorities, describing the manner in which CSO-SUN will implement the programme.
• Ensure that specific reports are prepared as required and outputs are delivered
• Ensures timely implementation of CSO-SUN activities to meet internal and external deadlines
• Spearhead resource mobilization to support the operations of the alliance network (i.e. proposal writing, donor relations, donor reporting, fundraising etc)
• Provides accurate and timely reports to the Board of Directors on the performance of projects
• Leads appropriate engagement with Government, local organisations, regional and international organizations on nutrition issues.
• Oversees establishment and maintenance of networking and partnership building programmes for fostering effective pursuit of the CSO-SUN Alliance mandate
• Where appropriate, liaises with government, donor and other agencies on policy issues relating to CSO-SUN Alliance programmes
• Oversees the public relations activities of CSO-SUN Alliance
• Perform any other relevant tasks as may be assigned by the Board of Directors.

Competencies

• Excellent Leadership and managerial skills
• Very good coordination skills
• Excellent analytical skills
• People management skills
• Planning and proposal writing skills
• Excellent advocacy and communications skills
• Experience in policy engagement with Government
• Project management skills
• Experience in activity based budgeting
• Highly motivated and self-starter
• Ability to think outside the box and excellent problem solving skills

Minimum Education Qualification:

• Degree in social sciences, nutrition, development studies or equivalent

Experience:

• Minimum three years management experience preferably in advocacy work and project management

Interested candidates can submit an application letter and CV to [email protected].

The application deadline is the 27th of July, 2017.