Senior Associate, Livelihoods (Côte d’Ivoire)

Position summary:

At Rainforest Alliance, we are looking for a motivated and impact driven Senior Associate, Livelihoods to join our team in Côte d’Ivoire. This position will play a pivotal role of ensuring our impact area “People have improved economic wellbeing" becomes a reality. The Senior Associate will ensure day-to-day technical support for a project that Rainforest Alliance and a cocoa company are implementing to provide cash payments linked to sustainable agricultural strategies for 5,000 farming households in Côte d’Ivoire.

The post holder will report to the Senior Project Manager and will provide support to cocoa cooperatives and their members to enhance their livelihoods through diversified revenue streams.

Specifically, the post holder will ensure project’s outcomes, outputs and activities related to livelihoods component are delivered on time, and work with the senior project manager to ensure that implementation follows high standards, internal protocols, and donor requirements, while building upon learning and best practices.

The post holder will support the project manager in liaising with other implementing partners to ensure donor’s needs and expectations remain aligned with project delivery and field realities.

The post holder along with the Senior Project Manager will work closely with internal teams such as: finance, to ensure a proper financial execution and reporting of project funding, technical teams handling livelihoods components, and the monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) team.

Responsibilities: 

• Daily project implementation: Lead all aspects of day-to-day implementation of project’s livelihoods component and maintain relationships with participating cocoa cooperatives and farmers.
• Identify and promote, with the Project Manager and other Rainforest Alliance staff and implementing partners, alternative income-generating activities to diversify cocoa households’ income sources and improve their economic resilience.
• Capacity Building and Training:
  • Conduct needs assessments to identify gaps and opportunities for capacity building among cooperatives and farming households.
  • Provide technical assistance and mentorship to farmers, ensuring they have the skills and knowledge to manage their revenues.
• Monitoring & Evaluation: Support M&E activities and data collection efforts:
  • Work closely with the Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) team to develop and implement tools for tracking the progress and impact of livelihoods interventions;
  • Regularly monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of livelihoods interventions, using data to inform and adapt strategies as needed and thus, ensure continuous improvement.
  • Document and share best practices, lessons learned, and success stories with internal and external stakeholders.
• Economic viability and Reporting:
  • Perform economic analyses to evaluate the financial benefits of livelihoods activities for the farming households;
  • Prepare detailed reports, case studies, and presentations to communicate the impact and success of the livelihoods component to donors, partners, and senior management.
• Sustainability and Scaling:
  • Develop and implement strategies to ensure the long-term sustainability of livelihoods interventions.
  • Identify opportunities to scale successful interventions to benefit a larger number of farming households.
• Collaborate with regional and global teams in gathering & scaling learnings that builds into the livelihoods impact objective of ‘People have improved economic wellbeing’.
• Perform any other duties that may be assigned from time to time.

Qualifications

• At least Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional qualification in relevant field, which could include Agronomy, (Agro)Economics, Business, Development studies, (Project) Management, Communication or other related fields;
• Proven experience (5 years) working with farmers or cooperatives in Côte d'Ivoire, preferably with donor-funded projects and experience with the topic of (cocoa) farmer livelihoods and living income;
• Well versed on the topics of farmer livelihood and living Income and affinity with (social) entrepreneurship and innovation;
• Experience with setting up and managing Monitoring & Evaluation activities and field data collection is a plus;
• Experience with project reporting (narrative and financial) and experience with organizing and facilitating (learning events) both in-person and online;
• Exc