About CRS

Catholic Relief Services is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. CRS works to save, protect, and transform lives in need in more than 100 countries, without regard to race, religion or nationality. CRS’ relief and development work is accomplished through programs of emergency response, HIV, health, agriculture, education, microfinance and peacebuilding.

Job Summary: 

You will provide technical advice and support to a range of program design and implementation issues in the area of Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) in line with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) program quality principles and standards, donor guidelines, and industry best practices to Country Program (CP) teams to advance the delivery of high-quality programming to the poor and vulnerable. You will be responsible for guiding adoption of climate smart technologies and innovations by farmers, cooperatives, and MSME’s. S/he will advise on specific climate smart interventions and extension systems along the agribusiness value chain including service providers, implementing a matching grant for innovative pilots and scaling

•  Support the development and contribute to the implementation of agency-wide strategies, standards, tools and best practices in Climate Smart Agriculture that effectively engage partners, donors, and governments. Help ensure a cross-sectoral approach integrating gender, protection mainstreaming, and disaster risk reduction.
• Supervise, coach and mentor F2F Agribusiness partners implementing CSA practices and technologies and ensure successful implementation.
• Support agribusinesses and partners in promoting, market uptake and scaling of evidence-based climate smart technologies and innovation solutions along the chains.
• Contribute to development and implementation of tailored CSA training and coaching programs for small holder farmers (including women and youth), extension services providers (public, private, NGOs etc.), farmer cooperatives on climate-proofing agricultural production systems for selected value chains.
• Support in the development of services providers business cases and scaling successful ones especially inclusion of inclusive and innovative water and energy efficient technologies.
• Provide technical solutions to team for strategic planning and how to best apply standards, best practices, partnership principles, tools and M&E, helping to ensure high-quality implementation.
• Support capacity strengthening initiatives in CSA programming for staff and partner through helping develop learning and training strategies and agendas/curriculums, conducting trainings and workshops, and coaching.
• Contribute to maintaining relationships with donors, peer organizations, research and other institutions, participate in forums in the area of CSA to collect and share best practices and promote CRS’ work.
• Collect and analyze program data, capture and share lessons learned and best practices for specific projects to facilitate improvements in decision-making and contribute to the Climate Smart Agriculture learning agenda. For example, contribute to climate risk assessments of prioritized commodities and contextual analysis, analyzing the barriers for uptake of climate smart agricultural best practices.

Basic Qualifications

• Master's Degree in Agriculture or agribusiness related field
• Minimum of three years relevant work experience with progressive responsibilities, ideally with an international NGO, with minimum of two years relevant field-based experience in Climate Smart Agriculture
• Knowledge of technical principles and concepts in Climate Smart Agriculture, General knowledge of other related disciplines to ensure proper cross-sectoral approach.
• Ability and demonstrated experience with climate smart agriculture innovations.
• Demonstrated ability to manage and/or evaluate climate change adaptation and resilience activities with focus on agriculture production.
• Knowledge of capacity strengthening best practices.
• Experience with program monitoring and evaluation and analysis.
• Experience and skills in networking and relations with donors, peer organizations, and faith-based and civil society partners. Understanding of partnership principles.

Required Languages-  Fluent written and spoken Arabic and professional level of written and spoken English required.

Travel- Position is based in El Daein, East Darfur. Must be willing and able to travel up to 70% to project areas in East and  South Kordofan

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities  

• Strong relationship management skills with ability to influence and get buy-in from people not under direct supervision and to work with individuals in diverse geographical and cultural settings
• Good strategic, analytical, problem-solving and systems thinking skills with capacity to see the big picture and ability to make sound judgment
• Good technical writing skills
• Presentation, facilitation, training, mentoring, and coaching skills
• Proactive, resourceful and results-oriented

Preferred Qualifications

• Proficient in MS Office packages (Excel, Word, PowerPoint), Web Conferencing Applications, information and budget management systems, knowledge-sharing networks.

Agency-wide Competencies (for all CRS Staff) 

These are rooted in the mission, values, and guiding principles of CRS and used by each staff member to fulfill his or her responsibilities and achieve the desired results.

• Integrity
• Continuous Improvement & Innovation
• Builds Relationships
• Develops Talent
• Strategic Mindset
• Accountability & Stewardship

Supervisory Responsibilities (if none, state none): 2 Project Officers : NRM PO & Agribusiness PO - CSA