Nutrition Coordinator
Based in Port Sudan/ Darfur
Alight, formerly the American Refugee Committee (ARC), is an international non-governmental organization providing integrated health; nutrition; and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH); food security and livelihoods; community protection; and peacebuilding services to nearly 2 million people annually.
Alight came to Sudan in 2004 as one of the first humanitarian responders to the emergency needs of some 500,000 war-affected IDPs and host populations in the Tulus and Gereida corridors in South Darfur. In 2014, Alight expanded services its reach to include East Darfur. Today, Alight serves displaced populations and host communities in Kassala, Gedaref, West Kordofan, and East and South Darfur states. Alight provides lifesaving humanitarian action, recovery, and development services in these five states, with a country office based in Port Sudan.
Field offices in Kassala, Gedaref, Nyala, El Daein, serve as the key state hubs for program delivery. Alight’s staff is more than 99 percent Sudanese, with nearly 400 full-time staff joined by over 100 incentive and community health and protection workers in delivering lifesaving programs and durable solutions in Sudan.
Alight is registered in Sudan and works closely with Federal and State Line Ministries to carry out its humanitarian and development mandates.
Role
Based in Darfur and Port Sudan, responsible for the strategic development of and overall leadership of Alight Sudan’s nutrition programming. You will provide technical leadership, strategic vision, and day-to-day guidance to the Nutrition and Health teams and be accountable for the sector’s programmatic development and implementation of high-quality services through an integrated program that meets or exceeds national and international standards.
You will have extensive travel to all program locations, and you’ll supervise and support a team of nutrition Managers & specialists in East Darfur, South Darfur, Kassala, Gedaref, Red Sea, West Kordofan, and other potential sites in achieving our goals. You will also contribute to other sectors in designing quality programs, data analysis, producing GIS maps, and providing technical support. You’ll be guided by and receive support from the Health and Nutrition Advisor and Deputy Executive director.
Your purpose will be to work with our teams to ensure the co-creation and delivery of quality programs and meaningful nutrition programming to the people we serve in Sudan.
You’ll know you’re doing well if:
You use your co-creation and design passion and technical skill in this newly created position to help us design and deliver a new way of thinking on a strategic and innovative approach to nutrition programming to respond to Sudan’s challenging context, one of the largest humanitarian programs in Alight. be passionate about building the capacity of staff, leading by example, with a spirit of collaboration, motivation, and mentorship with Alight’s values. bring energy and innovation to ensuring quality and accountability of Alight humanitarian and development programming in Sudan.
You will represent Alight at donor meetings, sector/cluster meetings, and other inter-agency meetings and establish collaborative linkages with GoS departments, national counterparts, and other key stakeholders (Ministry of Health, WHO, UNICEF, WFP, HAC). Within Alight, coordinate closely with other sectors technical advisors and support specialists (Finance, Operations) to contribute to strategic country program development and growth, ensure effective country program integration, standardization of programming and effective utilization of resources.
The Team
Sudan Health and Nutrition team consists of amazing men and women who are helping the individuals/communities in and around public facilities such as schools, clinics, markets and places of worship in South Darfur, East Darfur, Kassala, Gedarif, and West Kordofan to develop nutrition interventions that ensure access to dignified responses for men and women, boys and girls, and people with special needs.
Much of your day will be spent at Field offices with these amazing teams and community members, discussing design, backstopping emergency programs, or assessing needs and developing project proposals and BoQs. You’re not scared of having to change course and create structure and process out of ambiguity.
Building a shared organization takes time and intention. We will always be becoming Alight, which means your work will evolve as well. For now, here is how you could anticipate spending your time:
Area of Work 1: Be Human-centered Co-Create and always Start by Giving and Doing the Doable – 40% of the time
- We serve people who dream of transforming their environments from ones of scarcity to those of abundance. Always strive to be out there for them with your team, listening and learning how to meet their most immediate survival needs in nutrition services and how to help them build/re-build lives of dignity and purpose.
- You are well aware that key services like nutrition interventions and livelihoods are facing numerous challenges, such as the lack of well-designed spaces that consider the dignity of children and their mothers, particularly in areas with large displaced populations. Helping our health, protection, and livelihood teams design these key community assets will be an important part of your job.
- Supporting displaced people through emergency nutrition interventions that we, as Alight, deliver. You are expected to support the health and nutrition team in need assessment, developing proposals, and implementing responses.
- *Do the Doable and Start by Giving:*Our co-creation with people does not stop. This is the secret method to our “needs’ assessments” – they never stop. Some needs can be addressed immediately by small, quick-impact donor projects or investments or even small adjustments of the existing services to meet customer demand. Always strive to Do the Doable since our customers do not deserve to wait for their life-saving nutrition services if we can do something about it until a more sustained service is established.
- We are very meticulous about developing these sustainable services with our customers. Our country’s Nutrition Coordinator in Sudan is the person who leads the design process following the donor guidelines (BHA, SHF, UNHCR, UNICEF, OCHA, USAID, WB, etc.), SPHERE standards, Sudan authorities’ standards, and other industry and professional standards.
- Sharing experiences and learning: building our staff capacity and development is one of our commitments. ALIGHT’s Nutrition Coordinator is key to streamlining knowledge sharing and capacity & skill development for the department and health unit.
- Provide technical oversight to ensure integration of nutrition activities with other sectors, including Health and protection and food security.
- Plan and oversee (in conjunction with program staff) implementation of all nutrition activities and ensure progress toward established indicators by motivating, coaching, and guiding staff toward success.
- Lend technical expertise and vision to design, plan, and implement ALIGHT Sudan’s Country Strategy and Annual Plan, and support the Nutrition coordinator, Deputy Executive director, and Country Director to identify and develop innovative interventions in current programming and potential programs and geographical growth and expansion.
- In conjunction with the MEAL Coordinator, develop/adapt requisite tools for data collection, analysis, and reporting, taking the lead in analyzing and interpreting collected data in health and nutrition programs.
- Promote innovation, technical development, research, and learning in nutrition activities.
- Oversee the implementation of programs/projects. Providing technical support (direct and at a distance) to coordinators and managers while alerting or sharing information with the state program managers.
- Work with business development and grant management to ensure that proposals and reports are submitted on time and of high quality. Timely review of regular progress reports, donor reports, as well as amendments to projects, with contributions by the teams
- Support the State Program Managers and their teams in ensuring ongoing and careful monitoring of program implementation and provide timely advice to address unexpected implementation delays, costs, or quality issues to HoP/CD, proposing options/solutions needed for appropriate corrective actions.
- Work closely with the MEAL team for program quality and program integration to maximize the results for beneficiaries.
- Lead in developing program summaries, updates, success stories, information leaflets, and other collateral in close collaboration with the Communications/Advocacy Advisor.
- Assist in the recruitment of all nutrition program and facility staff, including identifying gaps and drafting JDs/ToRs.
- Support on data analysis, GIS mapping, and program quality improvement papers and briefs.
- Provide capacity buildings and strive for staff development and effectiveness.
- Guide staff in developing annual performance plans and ensure that all nutrition staff have completed appraisals at the end of the fiscal year.
- Lead Alight’s emergency rapid responses related to nutrition and food gaps in coordination with the ERP Coordinator and SAM
- Assess Alight’s readiness and develop plans to rapidly respond to public health outbreaks (Cholera, COVID-19, Measles, Polio, etc) in Alight’s operation areas.
Area of Work 2: Bravely Be Better and Choose Optimism — 30% of the time
Our customers deserve world-class quality and meaningful services. You recognize that nutrition services in Alight operational areas in Darfur, Kordofan, and East Sudan are a constant challenge due to the limited coverage of the systems as well as the operation and maintenance challenges. Our standard commitments constantly improve for the better nutritional status of our customers.
Your job will be to ensure that the nutrition services, health facilities, community structures, and infrastructure are well executed and that our health and nutrition awareness campaigns are reaching the communities.
Area of Work 3′ Find Others and Spark Joy — 20% of the time
You’re not intimidated by co-creating with others such as local authorities, UN agencies, donors, investors, and other teams/ NGOs to achieve these essential objectives in nutrition response:
- Finding others, such as amazing local and international partners, is one of Alight’s strengths. We believe the world is full of amazing people who want to help. Because our customers deserve world-class service and resources that are not always at our fingertips, we are eager to work with amazing others to Do the Doable and Bravely be Better in serving our communities.
- We share our lives with our customers, co-workers, and partners. We believe in upholding human dignity in everything we do. At the same time, trying to spark joy and hope for a better future is what makes us human. Our nutrition intervention and healthy lifestyle promotional events should always help meet the needs and demands of the customer while at the same time seeking to Spark Joy through art, beautiful designs, and performances.
- You are expected to represent ALIGHT in external sectoral coordination and technical forums and contribute to improving Sudan’s national health, nutrition, FSL clusters, and the overall humanitarian sector.
- Liaise with donors, local authorities, and government ministries, including ministries of Irrigation and Water resources at the federal and state levels, UN, and international and national NGOs, and attend country-level nutrition sector cluster meetings/forums to promote Alight programs.
- Collaborate regularly with other sectors, especially Health, protection, WASH and FSL to monitor, prepare for and respond to disease outbreaks.
- Collaborate with the HQ Global WASH Advisors to provide updates on the program, discuss emerging challenges, and collaborate on designing new programs or changes to existing programs.
New or Interesting Projects/Progressive responsibilities — 10%
- Lean into the things you love and spark interest, within or outside Alight’s team. We need you to honor the work that you have committed to doing, but also know that when you are unleashed, so are we.
Education, technical skills and knowledge
- Master’s degree in nutrition or master’s degree in public health or social sciences with Bachelor’ Degree in Nutrition
- Minimum of 4 years of professional experience in managing nutrition programs in emergencies or within the humanitarian organization
- International experience required
- Demonstrated experience in analyzing and interpreting nutrition data, including caseload projection and coverage.
- Experience conducting nutrition surveys such as nutrition smart surveys, SENS (for refugee settings) and needs assessments
- Strong computer literacy, strong skills in Microsoft office and functional experience with statistical packages such as ENA, Epi Info and SPSS.
- Experience with team management/supervision, interest and experience in capacity building of
National teams. - Excellent communication skills, including fluent spoken and written English, Arabic is a significant
advantage. - Experience of working in complex and volatile contexts, including familiarity with the humanitarian contexts of Sudan, would be an advantage.
- Experience in developing and implementing projects funded by USAID/BHA, EU, OCHA through OneGMS and UN agencies including UNHCR, WFP and UNICEF.
Behavioral competencies
- High motivated self-starter who takes direction well, and able to work independently
- Ability to work in fast paced environment with tight deadline, effectively managing multiple tasks
- Flexible and able to cope with stressful, fluid and ambiguous environment
- Adapt well in competitive, dynamic and multi -cultural and security sensitive with basic living conditions
- Cultural sensitivity essential