The Ugandan Jobline

Job Title:       Uganda Program Design Associate

Organization: One Acre Fund

Duty Station: Kampala,
Uganda

About us:

Founded in
2006, One Acre Fund supplies smallholder farmers with the agricultural services
they need to make their farms vastly more productive. We provide quality farm
supplies on credit, delivered within walking distance of farmers’ homes, and
agricultural trainings to improve harvests. We measure our success by our
ability to make farmers more prosperous: On average, farmers harvest 50 percent
more food after working with One Acre Fund.

We are growing
quickly. We currently serve more than 800,000 farm families in Eastern and
Southern Africa, with more than 7,500 full-time staff, and we aim to serve 1
million farm families by 2020.

Key Duties and Responsibilities: 

The first half of your job is to ensure our farmers
understand our wide set of products, and are changing their behaviours
accordingly through highly impactful trainings. You work closely with:

·      
Our M&E team to understand how we can
maximize impact from existing products and behaviours and you update and
innovate on our training content accordingly.

·      
Our Product Innovations team to maximize impact
from new products, services and practices

·      
Our Field Operations team, who ultimately
deliver all the content you are creating, to ensure strong understanding and
buy in behind our products, services and impact strategy.

Success in your role is measured by our ability to
optimize each season’s impact and thereby hit our impact targets.

The second half of your job is to help build our
field-facing strategies, setting our Field Team up for success:

·      
Work with Operations (Field Operations and
Systems) to develop practical solutions to field challenges

·      
Design and build the enrollment and repayment
strategies for our field team and transform them into understandable training
elements for our FIeld Leaders and Field Officers

·      
As part of the Steering Committee for Uganda,
help to build the long-term country programme direction and strategy

·      
Undertake post-mortems at the end of each major
programme phase and develop action-focused recommendations for future programme
improvements

·      
Manage the field team calendar and seasonal
activities, support in price setting and product selection.

·      
Sit on the impact working group

Success in these areas will be measured through
Field Team performance, specifically repayment of our credit portfolio and
hitting growth metrics such as overall farmer numbers.

Specific responsibilities include, but are not
limited to:

Creating, monitoring, executing and adjusting (if
needed) an Annual Impact Strategy:

·      
You will work with the Impact Lead, and in close
collaboration with PI, M&E, Field Ops and our Systems Teams to
create/update and present an outstanding Impact Strategy every season.

·      
In addition to help creating the annual Impact
Strategy, you also own the creation of an execution plan to ensure that this
strategy is effectively implemented. This includes coordination of key
stakeholders who may be implementing certain aspects of the strategy.

·      
Once launched, you are responsible for
monitoring how this strategy plays out in field and if needed adjust and
respond to challenges and opportunities as they unfold

Optimizing our Impact Training Portfolio/Farmer
Training Uptake/Retention:

·      
As we are growing our product portfolio and our
program is becoming more complex and tackling a wider range of challenges such
as income diversification, soil health, nutrition, etc. you will need to
explore new and innovative ways of delivering training content and/or
techniques for better knowledge retention

·      
We expect you to frequently spend a lot of time
in the field with our farmers and with the field team to understand what works
and what does not so that you constantly re-iterate and improve our techniques
for behaviour change.

·      
Lastly, it’s critical that you operate through
the formal processes set up by the Field Team to ensure the right content goes
out at the right time – in each and every district

Protecting our Farmers from External Impact
Threats:

·      
To minimize the time spent on responding to
unforeseen impact threats, you will:

·      
Work with our global/in country team to
prevent/prepare our farmers for the biggest impact threat.

·      
Work across our Field and Systems team to ensure
we have the systems/protocols build out to respond to risks with minimal
disruptions

·      
Keep a close eye on our Client Engagement
database and foster ongoing dialogue with Field Leaders to pick up challenges
as early as possible.

 In the event of unforeseen
challenges, you will help:

·      
Prioritize the response: Deprioritize and
carefully weigh the cost of the response against the risk. You quickly and
systematically quantify an impact risk and advise if/how we respond

·      
Coordinate/optimize the response: Your
leadership skills here could range from ‘only’ securing agronomic advice from
experts and ensuring Field Ops update next week’s meeting agenda to rapidly
aligning the organization behind a seed swap

·      
Learning for the future: Ensure that lessons
learned reach the team that can proactively prevent the risk in the future

Planning Field Activities

·      
Building out detailed process and plans for each
seasonal activity.

·      
Monitoring and trading off activities for the
field team where needed to prioritise tasks at the appropriate time.

·      
Coordinating between different departments to
feed into field based actions

Team Management

·      
You manage the Programme Design team. You will
be responsible for their professional development, performance, efficiency and
team culture in accordance with One Acre Fund management principles and
expectations.

Career Growth and Development

We have a strong culture of constant learning and we invest in
developing our people. You’ll have weekly check-ins with your manager, access
to mentorship and training programs, and regular feedback on your performance. We
hold career reviews every six months, and set aside time to discuss your
aspirations and career goals. You’ll have the opportunity to shape a growing
organization and build a rewarding long-term career

Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

·      
The ideal candidate must have Strong educational
background; degrees in Rural Development, Agronomy, or research in rural
environments preferred.

·      
At least 
5 years of relevant work experience which includes qualitative and
quantitative research on smallholder agriculture, with an emphasis on behavior
change and adoption of improved technologies (products or practices),
preferably including some work around agroforestry.

·      
Experience of working in Extension Services, or
implementing development programmes in rural locations preferred.

·      
Demonstrated leadership experience at work, or
outside of work, enthusiasm for learning, and openness to feedback.

·      
Ability to build teams and collaborate with
colleagues from diverse backgrounds.

·      
Language: English required. Luganda and/or Lusoga
strongly desired.

·      
Prior experience with research and extension
project design and management, ideally including participatory methods, on-farm
trials, surveys and focus groups

·      
Strong interpersonal skills to effectively
collaborate and coordinate work across multiple teams

·      
Ability to easily explain complex technical
concepts in plain language

·      
Strong ability to stay organized to
simultaneously manage the complexity of our products, regions, calendars,
effectively prioritising to meet short- and long-term deadlines

·      
Analytical ability to effectively identify and
prioritize impact opportunities

·      
Passion for collaborating with and training
others, with strong experience in contributing to capacity building and
professional development of colleagues and direct reports

·      
Humility. We have a fantastic and likeable team.
We are looking for passionate professionals who combine strong leadership
skills with good humor, patience, and a humble approach to service.

·      
We place a lot of value on the ability to
proactively respond to open and frank feedback in order to grow as individuals
and a team as well as constructively and respectfully give feedback

How to Apply:

All Candidates
who fit the following criteria are strongly encouraged to apply on line at the
link below

Click
Here

 Deadline:   10^th
January 2020 

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