USAID/Rwanda’s Health Office oversees an annual budget of over $88 million. The health portfolio covers child survival (immunization, integrated management of childhood illness), reproductive health (family planning, safe motherhood, fistula), infectious diseases (HIV/AIDS, malaria), and health systems strengthening. HIV/AIDS activities are implemented through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) together with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Department of Defense, and State Department. Malaria activities are implemented with funding from the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) together with CDC. The Health Office is led by a U.S. direct hire Office Director (Supervisory Population, Health and Nutrition Officer) and a Deputy Office Director and is comprised of four sub-teams: Community Health and Empowerment Services (CHES), Health Systems and Service Delivery (HSSD), the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), and Program Support. Each team manages an integrated portfolio of activities (projects) and works closely with the other teams to build capacity in Rwanda for sustained and improved health outcomes by providing innovative and responsive technical and financial assistance. The CHES team is responsible for activities that promote healthy behaviors and prevent illness, disability and death, for example use of family planning, safer sexual practices, breastfeeding, child complementary feeding, hand -washing, and appropriate care-seeking behavior. The nutrition component of the CHES portfolio aims to address very high rates of chronic malnutrition in children under five years of age by targeting nutrition during pregnancy and the first two years of life. This component of the portfolio addresses a wide range of influences, for example; promoting maternal and child feeding practices; increasing access to a diversified diet throughout the year through promotion of kitchen gardens and farmer field schools in communities, promoting savings and lending groups among women with children under five years of age, promoting community growth monitoring and promotion for children under five years of age, advocate for the national fortification of cereals and other staple foods used for child complementary feeding to address micronutrient deficiencies; access to safe water and sanitation, and the promotion of good hygiene practices; community identification of malnutrition cases and referral for treatment and care at health facilities and treatment of moderate acute malnutrition through village nutrition schools using positive deviance hearth (PD Hearth) model among others. Lastly, the team oversees efforts to improve the wellbeing of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) and adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) through a need-based comprehensive package of health and social services. The CHES team works in partnership with other Mission programs to decrease the impact of poor health (especially due to HIV/AIDS) on an individual’s well being, such as promoting access to education (for OVC and AGYW), economic strengthening activities and capacity building for local civil society organizations. The Project Management Specialist (Nutrition) contributes to the management and implementation of the USAID Health and Food Security portfolios. The incumbent serves as a technical expert on nutrition and supports programmatic and policy results in this area. This position reports directly to the CHES Team Leader and works closely with other program specialists in Health and other technical offices.
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS REQUIRED FOR THIS POSITION
a. Education: Bachelor’s degree in public health, nutrition or a related field is required.
b. Prior Work Experience: Minimum 5 years’ relevant professional experience to public health, especially on nutrition, project management and administration is required
c. Post Entry Training: Agency-specific leadership development and administrative trainings, AOR/COR Project Management of grants/cooperative agreements training are required.
d. Language Proficiency: Level IV English spoken and written, general professional proficiency to speak and read French is preferred.
e. Job Knowledge:
The Specialist must have:
● Expert knowledge of current health and nutrition issues and interventions.
● In-depth knowledge of Maternal, Child Survival and nutrition programs, policies, regulations and background on development and administration of national/international public health programs
● Detailed knowledge of GOR health care and nutrition-related systems and structures including familiarity with MOH policies, program priorities and regulations.
● Good working knowledge of team management techniques, organization, multidisciplinary and multicultural project teams and dynamic.
● Good working knowledge of overall administrative requirements, budgeting and fiscal management in support of contracts/cooperative agreements/grants/purchase requisitions.
● Working knowledge of USG public health programs, strategies, methods, processes and techniques used to plan, develop, implement and evaluate the results of public health programs.
f. Skills and Abilities:
The Specialist must have
● Strong oral and written communications skills to develop and maintain effective, sustainable working relationships with national and international working partners.
● Strong leadership skills to lead results-driven project teams and workgroups.
● Ability to analyze, understand and discuss new program design, management and implementation approaches, including the development of evaluation designs, use of reliable and valid instruments, and methods for data collection, analysis and reports.
● Ability to exercise considerable ingenuity and tact in applying guidelines to unique and different settings.
● Considerable innovation to influence other collaborative organizations engaged in nutrition activities to adopt and coordinate appropriate strategies for their program activities.
● Intermediate user level of word processing, spreadsheets, and databases.
● Strong skills in interpretation of program monitoring and evaluation data.
● Ability to produce results within tight deadlines.
● Ability to manage administrative and project management systems for programmatic impact and sound resources management.
19 Jan 2024
