Food Security and Agricultural Livelihoods Assessment Specialist

Food Security and Agricultural Livelihoods Assessment Specialist 

Job Posting

: 19/Jan/2022

Closure Date

: 03/Feb/2022, 12:59:00 AM

Organizational Unit: FNLEB

Job Type

: Non-staff opportunities

Type of Requisition: PSA (Personal Services Agreement)Grade Level: N/A

Primary Location

: Lebanon-Beirut

Duration: 11 monthsPost Number: N/A

FAO seeks gender, geographical and linguistic diversity in its staff and international consultants in order to best serve FAO Members in all regions.

 

• FAO is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality, background and culture
• Qualified female applicants, qualified nationals of non-and under-represented Members and person with disabilities are encouraged to apply
• Everyone who works for FAO is required to adhere to the highest standards of integrity and professional conduct, and to uphold FAO's values
• FAO, as a Specialized Agency of the United Nations, has a zero-tolerance policy for conduct that is incompatible with its status, objectives and mandate, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination　　
• All selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks
• All applications will be treated with the strictest confidentiality
• FAO staff are subject to the authority of the Director-General, who may assign them to any of the activities or offices of the Organization.

 

Organizational Setting

In recent years, Lebanon has faced multiple protracted crises, including the influx of Syrian refugees and an ongoing economic crisis characterized by high unemployment, increasing poverty, rapid inflation, and currency devaluation. This situation has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic creating overlapping economic and health crises.

As these crises continue to evolve, continuous monitoring and early warning is critical to inform humanitarian and resilience programming and guide anticipatory actions to counter adverse impacts of the crisis on food security and food systems, in particular for households engaged in agriculture.

The FAO Lebanon Office is in charge of preparing for and effectively responding to food and agricultural threats and crises, with the support from the Office of Emergency and Resilience (OER). As part of the OER, the Needs Assessment team is in charge of generating quality and timely evidence to inform decision-making and programming, including anticipatory action and emergency response through three work streams:

• A dynamic monitoring system of agricultural livelihoods and food security in the context of various shocks, consisting of periodic household and non-household data collection (through phone and in-person surveys) and analysis;
• Ex-post assessments of the impacts of shocks on agricultural livelihoods and value chains, using phased methodological approaches such as remote-sensing, damage & loss analyses, Post-Disaster Needs Assessments (PDNA), and other food security & livelihood surveys.
• Risk profiles, which are derived from geographic baselines of past events and their impacts on agricultural livelihoods.

In close collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture in Lebanon, a first agricultural household survey on food security monitoring was completed in 2021 with the overall objective of this information system was to monitor risks to food security and food systems. An additional phase, planned for 2022, will contribute strengthening and institutionalizing this dynamic context monitoring. To this effect additional households survey rounds will be carried out throughout 2022 and the end goal would be the generation of quality and evidence-based to guide programming and decision-making

 

Reporting Lines

The Consultant will work under the overall management of the FAO Representative and the technical supervision of the Regional Assessment Adviser. He/ She will work in close collaboration with the global Needs Assessment team and with other country colleagues involved in evidence for programming, especially the FAO Lebanon Programme Associate.

 

Technical Focus

The Consultant is responsible for coordinating and conducting the needs assessment activities in Lebanon. He is accountable for the timely implementation of activities related to the monitoring system in accordance with the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).

 

Tasks and responsibilities

The Consultant shall perform the below activities

Monitoring system

• Liaise regularly with the country management team and the Regional Assessment Adviser on the alignment of the roadmap with strategic, technical and operational requirements;
• Develop partnerships for data collection as required, including identification of partners, processing of Letters of Agreement and briefing/training of partners on the monitoring tools;
• Lead the design of the Households’ surveys (instruments, sample, questionnaires, data collection modalities) by using and adapting the standard tools to the country circumstances and roadmap as well as for the Key Informant ones;
• Coordinate data collection with partners (remotely for Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviews, web surveys, or face-to-face) with direct supervision and programming of digital tools for in-person surveys) and monitor data quality (including questionnaire testing and piloting, enumerators training, continuous control of interim datasets, quotas and audio recordings, production of a data quality report);
• Collect and monitor key secondary data and contextual information to inform questionnaire design, sample frames, weights, as well as data validation and interpretation;
• Abide by the data management standards of the monitoring system, including data protection and storage, and hub-related workflow;
• Lead data analysis (including weights, statistical analysis and qualitative analysis);
• Lead the exploration and interpretation of dashboards on the staging hub, including the formulation of highlights and operational recommendations, and facilitate their validation by a panel of internal experts before publication;
• Contribute to the production of various analytical products including reports, presentations, meta-analyses, and StoryMaps, using standard templates;
• Contribute to the dissemination of results and promotion of the Data in Emergencies hub. It can include hub demos and presentations of the survey findings to FAO country teams, Ministry of Agriculture, donors or Food Security and Agriculture Sector partners;
• Ensure the availability of data for other analytical processes such as Emergency and Crisis Responses Frameworks (Lebanon Crisis Reponses Plan and Emergency Response Plan) and participate to these processes as required;
• Promote and monitor the use of data and analytical products, and participate to response analysis as required;
• Document lessons learnt and data uses;
• Participate to global and regional training workshops, and contribute to the worldwide Community of Practice

Impact assessments and risks profiling

• Provide technical inputs to country decision-makers in the aftermath of hazards by proposing a combination of adequate and phased assessment methodologies (remote-sensing, rapid field assessment, Damage & Loss assessment, Post-Disaster Needs Assessment, other thematic assessments);
• Coordinate the implementation of impact assessments with relevant expert units, including the global Geospatial unit and other country units. Field assessments involve the coordination of all steps of the data collection and analysis cycle while remote-sensing analyses imply the definition of areas of interest and objectives, the provision of relevant secondary data, the interpretation of remote-sensing results in light of socio-economic data, and reporting; 
• Develop an impact assessment preparedness plan for the main hazards identified in the country. The plan should include the gathering of baseline data, the identification of existing Early Warning Systems to be monitored, the identification of relevant methodologies and potential partners, the contextualization of Standard Operating Procedures, and the briefing/training of relevant country colleagues and partners on the SOPs and tools;
• Contribute to risks profiling exercises, as needed.

 

 

CANDIDATES WILL BE ASSESSED AGAINST THE FOLLOWING

Minimum Requirements   

• National of Lebanon;
• Bachelor in agronomy, rural statistics, agricultural economics, relevant social or natural sciences, or other related discipline relevant to the mandate of the Organization;
• Minimum of 5 years of proven knowledge and experience in assessments, surveillance systems, or monitoring and evaluation in the context of emergencies and food crises;
• Working knowledge of English and Arabic. French is an Asset;

 

FAO Core Competencies

• Results Focus
• Teamwork
• Communication
• Building Effective Relationships
• Knowledge Sharing and Continuous Improvement

 

Technical/Functional Skills

• Ability to work under pressure and adapt to an evolving and complex humanitarian context and within multidisciplinary and different cultural background teams;
• Strong analytical skills and knowledge of agriculture, food security, livelihoods, food systems and value chains in the context of Lebanon;
• Experience or familiarity with food security and livelihoods assessments methodologies, including surveillance or monitoring systems, Post-Disaster Needs Assessments, Damage and Losses assessments, agricultural production assessment, market analysis, and/or value chain analysis;
• Experience in survey design, sampling, data collection, data analysis, and interpretation for assessment processes in agriculture and food security;
• Working knowledge of advanced statistics with ability to use statistical software packages (in particular SPSS , STATA and/or  R);
• Expertise in remote data collection including phone or web-based surveys and/or remote-sensing would be a plus;
• Experience in using and programming questionnaires in digital data collection tools (Kobo toolbox, ODK);
• Proven data visualization and reporting skills;
• Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written;
• Coordination skills with strong individual planning capacity;
• Knowledge of humanitarian principles.

 

Please note that all candidates should adhere to FAO Values of Commitment to FAO, Respect for All and Integrity and Transparency.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

• FAO does not charge a fee at any stage of the recruitment process (application, interview meeting, processing).

• Incomplete applications will not be considered. If you need help or have queries, please contact: Careers@fao.org

• Applications received after the closing date will not be accepted.

• Only language proficiency certificates from UN accredited external providers and/or FAO language official examinations (LPE, ILE, LRT) will be accepted as proof of the level of knowledge of languages indicated in the online applications.

• For other issues, visit the FAO employment website: http://www.fao.org/employment/home/en/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HOW TO APPLY
• To apply, visit the recruitment website at Jobs at FAO and complete your online profile. We strongly recommend that your profile is accurate, complete and includes your employment records, academic qualifications, and language skills
• Candidates are requested to attach a letter of motivation to the online profile
• Once your profile is completed, please apply, and submit your application
• Please note that FAO only considers higher educational qualifications obtained from an institution accredited/recognized in the World Higher Education Database (WHED), a list updated by the International Association of Universities (IAU) / United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The list can be accessed at http://www.whed.net/ 
• Candidates may be requested to provide performance assessments and authorization to conduct verification checks of past and present work, character, education, military and police records to ascertain any and all information which may be pertinent to the employment qualifications
• Incomplete applications will not be considered
• Personal information provided on your application may be shared within FAO and with other companies acting on FAO’s behalf to provide employment support services such as pre-screening of applications, assessment tests, background checks and other related services. You will be asked to provide your consent before submitting your application. You may withdraw consent at any time, by withdrawing your application, in such case FAO will no longer be able to consider your application
• Only applications received through the FAO recruitment portal will be considered
• Your application will be screened based on the information provided in your online profile
• We encourage applicants to submit the application well before the deadline date.
 

If you need help, or have queries, please contact: Careers@fao.org
 

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