Cooperatives Development and Grants Officer 228 views

Job Title: Cooperatives Development and Grants Officer

Shelter For Life International (SFL) is a Christian relief and development organization with over 30 years of history in providing humanitarian and developmental assistance to communities around the world. The SFL headquarters is in Minnesota, USA. Our mission is to demonstrate God’s love by enabling people affected by poverty, conflict, and disaster to restore their lives and rebuild their communities. We strive to be socially and environmentally sustainable by employing cultural sensitivity, community participation, appropriate alternative technologies, and cost-effective methodologies to our programs, which are underpinned by human-centered design. Learn more at www.shelter.org  

Program Overview:

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Foreign Agriculture Service through its Food for Progress (FFPr) program has awarded Shelter For Life a five-year (2023-2028) climate smart horticulture value chain project called Climate Resilient Optimization for Productivity in Horticulture (CROP-H) in The Gambia with the following strategic objectives:

1. To increase agricultural productivity in horticulture products while promoting climate change mitigating technologies and techniques; and
2. To expand the trade of agricultural products (domestically, regionally, and internationally) through improvements in the trade-enabling environment.

The proposed program will develop and upgrade horticulture value chain linkages through the following four program goals: 1) Increased productivity and output; 2) Expand and improve quality exports, 3) Provide youth and women employment, and 4) improve incomes and standards of living for smallholder farmers in The Gambian horticulture sector.

Shelter For Life is seeking a Cooperatives Development and Grants Officer for the CROP-H project. This position will be responsible for developing horticulture associations, cooperatives, and federations by building their operational and business capacity, including access to small grants and finance. This position will facilitate the transformation of the relationships of key market actors to be more inclusive sustainable and equitable. This position will be responsible for the development of buyer-seller relationships, extension services, capacity building and coaching on organizational structure, cooperative governance, and process improvement. This position will be based at our Sub-Office in Jarra Soma, Lower River Region.

Duties And Responsibilities:

• Facilitate productive partnerships and market linkages of associations/cooperatives/federations with processors, exporters, extension service providers, input suppliers, private sectors, and other relevant partners by strengthening their business capacity to organize sales, increase profit, and improve the quantity and quality of horticulture produce.
• Identify and build linkages between buyers, aggregators and agro input suppliers to increase efficiency of the horticulture supply chains.
• Work with the other team members to ensure the delivery of the sales volume targets via market facilitation.
• Facilitate capacity-building activities and ensure adequate consultation and participation of associations/cooperatives/federation staff, women, and youth in the horticulture value chain.
• Facilitate identification of training needs, prepare training materials, and deliver training of trainers (ToT) on subjects such as farming as a business, business plan development, and cooperative governance.
  
• Provide technical advice and support on issues related to business management, trade, sales, marketing, post-harvest handling of fruit and vegetables.
• Create linkages between buyers and sellers of horticulture produce, value-added products and developing end-market opportunities including the tourism sector, build win-win relationships between processors and out growers.
• Strengthen the commercial, technical, organizational, managerial, and institutional capacities of associations/cooperatives/federations.
• Facilitate access to information for producer groups on trade formalities and SPS standards.
• Assist in drawing up contractual agreements between producer groups and providers of specified services (off-takers).
• Work with the Trade Promotion team to organize business to business meetings, forums, and group platforms for market linkages to facilitate negotiations and contract agreements between producers, aggregators and input distributors & the hotels and tourism sector, processors, exporters, and local agro     dealers.
• Compile, prepare, and submit timely field activity reports.
• Support consolidation of M&E data collection and consolidation from lower levels.
• Oversee, coach, and assist business plan preparations with among grant applicants.
• Oversee the small grant activities for producer groups and MSMEs (Micro, Small and medium Enterprises), including establishing the screening and business plan review committee, and completion of all required reports of committee decisions.
• Establish criteria for the transparent allocation of small grants.
• Oversee all the activities related to access to finance; establish strong partnerships with financial institutions, credit unions, and MFIs (Micro Finance Institutions) to enable producer groups and grant awardees to open accounts and have access to loans and finance.
• Provide post-investment training and capacity development support to grant awardees.
• Promote the adoption and increased use of digital market platforms between horticulture actors.
• Closely coordinate and work together with project coaches and officers for a harmonized approach.
• Conduct other duties as may be assigned by the Horticulture Marketing Manager.

These essential functions are not to be interpreted as a complete statement of all duties performed. Employees will be required to perform other job-related duties as required. All work responsibilities are subject to having performance goals and/or targets established.

Position Qualifications and Skills / Required Profile:

• Bachelor/Master’s degree in one of the following: Agribusiness; Economics; Horticulture; Business Administration; and/or related field.
• At least 3 years of demonstrated experience in capacity building of horticulture associations, cooperatives, or federations and developing and facilitating market linkages, market systems development and facilitation, business advising and organization.
• Preferred previous work experience with banks, INGOs and private sector would be a strong asset.
• Experience of project planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.
• Strong communication, adult teaching and community level facilitation and coordination skills. Social and behavior change experience is an asset.
• Able to use and utilize MS office applications.
• Serious and hard-working, eager to learn, good feedback mentality, result oriented, taking responsibility and accountability, good in building and maintaining relations, key partners and negotiation skills.
• Good English writing skills and preferred knowledge of multiple local languages would be strong asset.
• Preferred experience working or collaborating with horticulture-related private sector companies or agribusinesses and farmer cooperatives.

How to Apply:

Interested candidates who meet the qualifications are invited to submit their CV and a short cover letter to crophinfo@shelter.org. Please include the title of the position and our name in the subject line of your email. Please include the title of the position you are applying for and our name in the subject line of your email. Deadline for submission of Application is 11th October 2024. 

Note: Any application submitted after the deadline will not be considered. We will review applications carefully and only shortlisted candidates will be contacted for interview. 

Shelter for Life International is an equal opportunity employer and encourages candidates from all backgrounds to apply.