United States of America | SENIOR PROGRAM OFFICER

Closing date: 06 Feb 2012

CARE is seeking a dedicated Senior Program Officer in the Nutrition Plus Team within the Health Equity Unit. This unit collaborates with partners in generating, sharing, and applying knowledge on the relationships between health, equity, and empowerment to maximize global impact on poverty, social justice, and well-being for the most marginalized people. Health Equity works as one unit through partnering, innovating and multi-directional learning to leverage links between health, equity, and empowerment among the most marginalized people. Within the Health Equity Unit the Nutrition Plus team is responsible for CARE’s Nutrition and Newborn/Early Childhood Programming that addresses the information and service needs of underserved communities, focusing on underlying social and structural causes of poor health and nutrition using empowerment approaches with a special focus on Gender, Equity and Diversity (GED) and fostering a culture of organizational learning.

The Nutrition Plus team is grounded in a unifying vision that “All children have a right to the best possible start in life.” The team mission is to ensure the best chance for survival and support optimal growth and development for children under five years. Both Nutrition Plus’ vision and mission fall under the umbrella of the Health Unit’s goal to empower people to achieve their rights to health and well being. The Nutrition Plus team is responsible for The Window of Opportunity (Window) project, a five-year, privately funded project as well as Early Childhood Development, and Newborn and Child health programming. The goal of the Window project is to protect, promote, and support optimal IYCF and related maternal nutrition practices in selected countries by 2012.

The Senior Program Officer will lead on the management of the Window of Opportunity and Early Childhood Development grants. This will include completing regular follow up on spending and yearly forecasting. S/he will support proposal development with writing and editing when necessary. Within the team, the Senior Program Officer provides organizational support to team members, specifically the Director of Nutrition Plus for the coordination of programmatic activities.

Primary Responsibilities:

•Support Country Offices;
•Coordinate the technical and programmatic Nutrition Plus Activities;
•Support Early Childhood Education Activities;
•Oversee the management of Grants and Proposals.

Required Skills:

•Master's degree in public health or nutrition desired (or other relevant health specialization);
•3 - 5 years experience working in health programming with a rights based organization;
•Familiarity with community based approaches for program design and implementation;
•Excellent team work and interpersonal skills;
•Good organizational skills;
•Attention to detail;
•Grants management skills;
•Understanding of qualitative and quantitative research methods;
•Experience with the complete project cycle from assessment through evaluation;
•Ability to operationalize programmatic strategies;
•Excellent verbal and written English communication skills;
•Ability to establish and maintain effective partnerships and working relationships with government, donors, ministry officials, community leaders, and other development partners;
•Knowledge of word processing, spreadsheet software, and data processing.

Desired Skills:

•Working with IYCF, nutrition and/or ECD programming;
•Overseas experience;
•French or Spanish language skills;
•Background in IYCF, ECD, Maternal Nutrition or Nutrition.

Our diversity is our strength; we encourage people from all backgrounds and experiences, particularly women, to apply.
How to apply:

https://tbe.taleo.net/NA5/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=CAREUSA&cws=1&...