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The United Nations World Food Programme: Programme Policy Officer (School Meals), FT-NOB, Lilongwe

admin May 9, 2023

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DEADLINE: 11 May 2023

The United Nations World Food Programme: Programme Policy Officer (School Meals), FT-NOB, Lilongwe

ABOUT WFP

The United Nations World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. The mission of WFP is to help the world achieve Zero Hunger in our lifetimes. Every day, WFP works worldwide to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry and that the poorest and most vulnerable, particularly women and children, can access the nutritious food they need.

ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT

This role will be based in WFP Malawi Country office in Lilongwe. Job holders will typically report to the Strategic Outcome Manager, and under the overall supervision of the Head of Programme, or designate.

Job holders operate with a high degree of independence, manage more junior staff to ensure that programme and policy objectives are achieved in full. They are usually involved in a wide variety of programme and policy activities and analytical work, some of which may be of a considerable complexity. At this level job holders are expected to contribute to performance improvement.

JOB PURPOSE

The WFP Malawi Country Strategic Plan is a five-year strategy aimed at supporting national efforts on hunger and nutrition, reduce vulnerability to food insecurity and malnutrition in recognition of gender and age in order to advance its resilience agenda in anticipation of recurrent shocks.

Under one of the Strategic Outcomes: “Vulnerable populations in food-insecure communities benefit from strengthened shock-responsive social protection systems and efficient supply chains that ensure access to safe, nutritious food all year round”, WFP supports the Government of Malawi in implementation of School Meals programme. With a policy to achieve universal coverage, the Government and its partners are currently reaching about 50 percent of all primary schools with the School Meals Programme. WFP supports an estimated 600,000 children in 450 primary schools in 7 most food insecure districts.

The purpose of the assignment is to support the government’s efforts by leading WFP Malawi’s School Meals programme as outlined in the Country Strategic Plan. School Meals programme is a critical safety net, as also recognized in the Malawi National Social Support Programme (MNSSP), as well as an essential component of an integrated school health and nutrition package, as outlined in the School Health and Nutrition Policy, WFP works with the Government and communities to effect national best practice guidelines for school meals, seeking to gradually expand Home-Grown School Meals (HGSM) models across the country and assist in the development of a more sustainable national school meals programme. This is also in line with the integrated approach of WFP’s CSP in Malawi, as linkages with activities supporting livelihoods and smallholder and local farmer organisations are established to supply nutritious, locally produced, diversified food commodities to schools for the SMP.