Nutrition Coordinator, South Sudan, Sudan

General objective: The Medico-Nutritional Coordinator (CMN) is responsible for overseeing, coordinating, and ensuring integration between ACF-USA nutrition programs, as well as liaising with various external partners on nutrition issues for South Sudan. Nutrition refers here as both Nutrition Treatment Program (NTP) and Nutrition Surveillance Program (NSP) Specific objectives:

• To oversee and ensure coordination/integration between all ACF-USA nutrition programs in South Sudan
• To oversee nutrition and health promotion program managers and give support and analysis where necessary
• To provide technical support and guidance within nutrition programs
• To positively represent ACF-USA and ACF-USA interests to donors, partners and counterparts
• To actively participate in external coordination with nutrition partners and governmental bodies and provide technical support and guidance for the development of national nutrition policy and protocols in southern Sudan
• To coordinate within the ACF-USA team
• Reporting and senior program staff evaluations
• To ensure compliance of programmes in achieving project objectives according to current grants
• To propose strategies that are coherent with the context and humanitarian situation
• To work in collaboration with ACF-France counterparts in preparation and implementation of handover of ACF-France nutrition activities to ACF-USA during 2008.

Activities: To oversee and ensure coordination/integration between all ACF-USA nutrition programs and other department programs:

• Participation in the understanding of the nutritional situation and nutrition challenges in South Sudan
• In collaboration with the nutrition program managers, definition of the nutritional strategy for ACF- USA as well as identification and design of future nutrition programs
• Ensuring effective integration and coherence of ACF’s nutritional activities – nutrition surveillance, feeding programs, capacity building – in accordance with both the nutritional strategy and the respective country strategies
• Ensuring the cohesion of the nutrition teams within themselves and with the other sector programs
• Ensure that programs are harmonized, standardized and inline with the most up to date ACF protocols and tools
• Ensuring collaboration with nutrition department with other ACF sectors where applicable, for example in cooperation for activity implementation, beneficiary assessment and designing multisectoral strategies.

To oversee nutrition program managers:

• Supervision of the nutrition program managers: induction, follow up, evaluation, and promotion of positive team dynamics and motivation
• In case of gap of a nutrition program manager position, the CMN will provide assistance to the nutrition team in running the program
• Overseeing the work of nutrition program managers in order to ensure good compliance of activities within the objectives of the mission and of proposals - this includes regular visits to the teams in the field in order to evaluate achievements; to discuss the constraints encountered, the possible solutions and to make recommendations for current and future programs
• Validation of reports for external dissemination in collaboration with the Tech Dir (such as nutrition surveillance, evaluation and advocacy reports)

To provide technical support and guidance within nutrition programs:

• Guarantee of the technical quality of the nutritional activities (respect of ACF protocols and guidelines)
• Validation of technical manuals and guidelines used within ACF-USA nutrition programs, and promotion of new technical protocols in compliance with ACF nutrition policy
• Technical justification and technical aspects of new nutrition programs/activities as needs arise
• To train ACF-USA nutrition teams on technical issues (methodology, protocols) as needs arise
• To ensure good quality of the trainings provided by the nutrition teams to partners and that these trainings match with ACF nutrition protocols

To effectively represent ACF-USA and its interests to donors, partners and counterparts:

• Participation in all relevant meetings related to nutrition and health, including meetings with donors, partners and governmental bodies, in coordination with the HoM
• Encouraging the collaboration with other agencies, such as health NGOs, on nutrition activities or technical assistance
• Support to ACF-USA advocacy activities related to nutritional issues (follow up on advocacy plans, press releases), in coordination with the HoM
• Promotion of ACF-USA as a major actor in nutrition in South Sudan; through active participation in the national Nutritional Technical Working Group and other related forums and dissemination of external reports (ie. nutrition surveillance bulletins, causal analysis and evaluation reports of the nutrition situation in the country)
• Examine and pursue funding opportunities from donors and partners, in collaboration with HoM (including developing and submitting concept papers, proposals, etc)

To actively participate in external coordination with nutrition partners and governmental bodies and to provide technical support and guidance for the development of national nutrition policy and protocols:

• Active participation in the monthly national Health and Nutrition Coordination meeting
• Active participation in the monthly Nutrition Technical Working group and other coordination meetings and forums related to health and nutrition (such as NGO health forum, UN and MoH sector and budget work plans)
• Technical support and guidance to partner agencies and relevant governmental bodies, specifically the MoH at all levels (county, state and national levels), in the development of national nutrition policy and protocols for South Sudan.

To coordinate within ACF-USA team:

• Collaborate and communicate with various program managers, HoM, Coordinators, program managers, field officers and any other ACF-USA resource people in order to ensure the coherence of ACF-USA activities and reports in terms of ACF nutritional strategy.
• Informing/updating the HoM on nutrition program implementation and any issues on a regular basis
• Participation in weekly coordination team meetings and any other general team or strategy meetings
• Follow up of nutrition program budgets in liaison with the Admin coordinator and program managers, to ensure budget expenditure is inline with program objectives and timeline
• Follow up of logistics requirements for nutrition programs in liaison with the Logistics Department and in collaboration with program managers
• Participation in the overall mission and program strategy, narrative and financial project proposals and reporting, in collaboration with Log/Admin/HoM and other program coordinators as necessary

Reporting and senior program staff evaluation:

• Reporting on attended meetings or training to share with program managers, coordination team and NY as necessary
• Monthly ACF nutrition report to be sent to HoM and NY tech dir. – which includes an overview of the nutritional situation in southern Sudan, external coordination update, achievements for the past month and objectives for the following month
• Participation to the monthly sitrep
• Validate donor proposals and reports and ACF nutrition analysis reports written by program managers and lend support in the process
• Prepare handover report as necessary to replacement
• End of mission report to be sent to HoM, Tech Dir, Desk officer and Human Resources in NY.
• Responsible to evaluate nutrition program managers at least every 6 months and make recommendations to HoM/NY for their training needs or promotion
• Develop/revise HR structure and plan for ACF nutrition department in South Sudan, in collaboration with program managers and according to evolving program needs