Livelihoods Assistant World Vision Uganda

The Livelihood Assistant will be responsible for project implementation of field livelihood activities, mainly focusing on farmer groups capacity development in the settlement. S/He will build the capacity of the farmer groups through training/ demonstrations and field follow up. S/He will work closely with OPM and other actors in actively addressing farmer skills development, production, processing and marketing issues. S/He will be supervised by the Livelihood Officer who will ensure that activities are approved, implemented, monitored and reported according to agreed project plans in line with the donor and World Vision Uganda (WVU) policies. S/He will be directly involved in the implementation of project activities will be based in Imvepi base camp.

Key Outputs/Responsibilities.
Project implementation and sustainability
Provide expertise and technical assistance in agronomy and agribusiness, climate smart agriculture, marketing and financial inclusion.
• Promote the use of modern farming practice and techniques through training, advising farmers, farm visits and demonstrations so as to transform targeted families from subsistence to commercial farmers in line with GoU policy.
• Provide technical advice and support on enterprise development initiatives with high environmental integrity.
• Identify and promote local innovations through adaptive research among farmers in response to climate change in their communities.
• Established demonstration plots to act as learning and multiplication sites for farmer groups
• Participatory selection of beneficiaries, prioritization of income generating activities, life skills awareness raising, and capacity building of the groups.
• Identify technical capacity and challenges for beneficiaries, skills and knowledge they have in agronomy, business development and income generating activities.
• Train beneficiaries on community self-help methodologies, including group governance and leadership, rapid appraisal of income generating activities.
• Ensure timely procurement of and delivery of right quality and quantity of farmer inputs.
• Promote Resilience and Livelihoods programme model for faster adoption of improved farming technologies towards building secure livelihoods for the marginal poor.

Community engagement and advocacy
• Conduct awareness on postharvest handling, marketing and simple processing activities among farmers and local leaders.
• Link farmer groups to government and other partners to access additional social services
• Facilitate community awareness campaigns on climate smart agriculture and adoption of best practices
• Promote community adoption and production of improved and marketable crops as guided by assessments
• Facilitate and link beneficiaries to economic development and income generating activities.
• Make sure there is balanced gender representation amongst beneficiaries and leaders.
• Assist in solving any conflicts within group members.

Stakeholders Engagement, Networking and Collaboration
• Maintaining effective coordination and working relations with donors and other relevant stakeholders at field level
• Mobilize and facilitate engagements of stakeholders during planning meetings, workshops and implementation.
• Network and collaborate with District Local Government, OPM, UNHCR and other relevant stakeholders in the Program Area.
• Liaise with Project Manager for all decisions related to the project, and carry out other duties as may be assigned.

Documentation, Reporting and knowledge management
• Conduct regular follow up visits to farmer groups, and their enterprises, and to members to see if they are applying the practices, and provide technical advice and mentoring.
• Track progress of the farmer groups and keep records.
• Carry out quarterly meetings with beneficiary groups to assess performance at the community and project level.
• Facilitate data collection from farmer groups, and manage the information flow in the M&E (LEAP) database

Support preparation of farmer groups own monitoring plans.
• Consolidate and compile monthly and quarterly reports, inclusive of success stories and lessons learnt.

Child Protection and Wellbeing
• Monitor the wellbeing and child abuse cases and report any incidents in line with child protection policy and guidelines.
• Work with local leaders to protect children from child violations and abuses
• Sensitize children including most vulnerable, guardians/parents and other stakeholders about children’s rights and responsibilities.

Qualifications: Education/Knowledge/Technical Skills and Experience.
• Degree/Diploma in Agriculture or Economics or Agribusiness or Forestry or any other relevant discipline
• Climate Smart Agriculture, Entrepreneurship, micro finance and strong agribusiness experience is an added advantage.
• Excellent spoken and written command of English. Knowledge of Arabic and Lugbara is an added advantage.
• Good communication, writing, facilitation and networking skills;
• Prior experience working in a KOICA funded project is an added advantage;
• Knowledge of West Nile, Uganda and sound understanding of Refugee context is an added advantage;
• Track record demonstrating high integrity, innovativeness, creativity, reliability and dependable
• Excellent computer application skills in Microsoft packages (Word, Excel and PowerPoint);
• Team player, Self-motivator, able to work with limited supervision;
• Ability to ride a motorcycle with valid driving/riding license
• Must be a committed Christian, able to stand above denominational diversities.
• Minimum of 2 years professional work experience in, Livelihoods, food security and microfinance enterprise development
• Computer literacy
• Willing to attend and participate/lead in daily devotions and weekly Chapel services.