Senior Associate, Environment At Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition

About the Role

The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is seeking a Senior Associate – Environment to provide technical support on environmental aspects of Nourishing Food Pathways programme. This role will be offered on a two(2) year fixed term contract, subject to availability of funding and will be based in Nairobi, Kenya.

The Senior Associate, Environment will work closely with our project teams to ensure screening for their environmental impact using the GAIN Environment Screening Tool, supporting teams to identify and mitigate risks, as well as pursuing potential co-benefits. The position will also build and maintain partnerships with actors in this space and create awareness of successful approaches towards desired environmental impact.

Key Responsibilities include:

• Develop and oversee a programme of capacity building activities to upskill the organisation and enhance organisational understanding of critical topics across environment and nutrition with the support of the Lead, Environment and Nutrition.
• Lead work across GAIN countries and programmes to screen projects for their environmental impact using the GAIN Environment Screening Tool, supporting teams to identify and mitigate risks, as well as pursuing potential co-benefits.
• Work closely with to engage senior management on GAIN’s Environment work and manage stakeholders at SMT and Board level.
• In collaboration with Lead, Environment and Nutrition actively contribute to identify new funding opportunities and develop new proposals integrating nutrition and environment.
• Maintain existing partnerships with other organisations in this space and contribute to develop new ones, including proactive sharing of GAIN’s work to green our programmes to enable others to adapt and adopt successful approaches piloted through our projects.
• Develop communications materials (blogs, articles, videos, social media posts) to drive awareness and engagement with the linkages between nutrition and climate, and the solutions to joint challenges.

About you

The ideal candidate should have experience providing technical guidance on environmental impact of projects and working closely with relevant stakeholders to ensure actions that mitigate risks or boost co-benefits are implemented. Experience with Food Systems is critical to succeed in this role. Demonstrated experience with environmental reporting tools, management standards and targets (e.g. net zero, ISO 14001) highly preferred. You should be able to collaborate and provide support to multiple projects.

The candidate should be skilled in maintaining partnerships within the environmental space where they drive awareness and linkages between nutrition and climate actors. A track record in project management delivering quality project outcomes on time, and within allocated budget is required. You should be able to collect data and report findings to senior leadership.

The post holder should have experience in training project teams/group facilitation to ensure effective stakeholder participation and consensus building. An educational background with a Masters’ degree level in environmental science or a related field is required, or equivalent work experience.

About our Offer

The starting gross salary on offer for this role is from KES 3,125,820 – KES 3,576,108 gross per annum, depending on experience.

GAIN has a fair and competitive salary structure that allows for annual progression subject to good performance. In addition, GAIN offers a total of 37 days holiday per year (including annual leave, public holidays and additional office closure days), an attractive pension scheme and competitive insurance cover including health, travel and life assurance. We are committed to the health of our staff, especially in these challenging times, and have developed a programme of wellbeing that includes flexible and hybrid working, additional leave allowances, wellbeing days, mindfulness coaching and access to independent and confidential counselling.

GAIN also has a strong commitment to professional development. We will support you to grow in your career through both formal and informal training, and are committed to providing opportunities through internal recruitment, secondments, and promotion. All of this is delivered in a supportive and collaborative environment.

About GAIN

The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is a Swiss-based foundation launched at the United Nations in 2002 to tackle the human suffering caused by malnutrition. Due to COVID19, conflict in Ukraine and climate change, malnutrition and hunger have worsened significantly since 2019, reversing a decade of progress. There is growing recognition that our food systems need to change if we are to reverse these trends.

GAIN’s Strategy aims to transform food systems to make healthier diets from sustainable food systems accessible to all people and especially those whose are most vulnerable to shocks. By 2027, we aim to improve the access of 1.5 billion people to nutritionally enhanced staple foods, improve the access of 25 million people to healthier diets, and support positive food system change in 10 countries. This is bold and complex, and the only way to achieve this is to work together with partners including governments, businesses, and civil society at the country and global level. These goals, and the ways of achieving them, build on our twenty-year legacy of transforming people’s lives with improved nutrition through concerted action and effective policy change.

Our Working Culture and Environment

We provide a flexible working environment that includes a combination of home and office working opportunities through our global hybrid working policy. This encourages our staff to have a healthy work-life balance and increases staff motivation, enriches employee wellbeing, and improves performance and productivity.

All of our positions are based in one or more of GAIN’s designated offices as stated on our job advertisements. Successful candidates will be based in one of GAIN’s country offices and must have the existing right to live and work within a reasonably commutable distance of the relevant city / cities in which the role is advertised. Please note, that GAIN does not sponsor working visas and relocations.

GAIN reserves the right to withdraw an offer of employment for candidates who are considered to ineligible under the above conditions during or after the recruitment process.

Applicants must have the right to work and be currently based in the advertised country location, to be eligible to apply for this position.

This advert closes on 30th August 2024. Early applications are encouraged. GAIN reserves the right to close this advert early should we receive suitable candidates ahead of the closing date.

The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition is committed to equality of opportunity and creating an inclusive environment where diversity is valued. We are keen to reflect the diversity of our society at every level within our organisation and therefore welcome applications from talented and committed people from all backgrounds, representing the diverse societies we operate in.