Title: Associate Scientist - Healthier Rice Stewardship & Deployment
About IRRI: The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is the world’s premier research organization dedicated to reducing poverty and hunger through rice science; improving the health and welfare of rice farmers and consumers; and protecting the rice-growing environment for future generations. IRRI is an independent, nonprofit, research and educational institute, headquartered in Los Baños, Philippines, has offices in 17 rice-growing countries in Asia and Africa, and over 1,000 staff.
Job Purpose
Under the direction of the Senior Associate Scientist II – Healthier Rice Deployment and dotted line with the Country Manager – Healthier Rice Program Bangladesh, the Associate Scientist – Healthier Rice Stewardship and Deployment will oversee deployment and stewardship rollout that will effectively deliver and drive sustainable uptake of Healthier Rice in Bangladesh. The person will support the HRP BRRI team in coordination and monitoring and evaluation. Located at BRRI Gazipur..
This position will be based at our country office in Dhaka, Bangladesh and is open to Bangladeshi nationalities only
Roles and Responsibilities
Purpose
- Stewardship and roll-out/deployment for Golden Rice in Bangladesh
- With the guidance of the Senior Associate Scientist II – Healthier Rice Deployment, design, refine, and implement a stewardship strategy to help the Healthier Rice Program strategically deploy Golden Rice (GR).
- Properly understand and fully address the strategic issues around stewardship for product development and delivery challenges raised by this project, for quality of product along the rice value chain from seed production and grain production, to aggregation and distribution along the rice value chain to eventual consumption at the household level.
- Help identify pivotal experts within concerned agencies for articulating stewardship protocols for quality control and risk prevention to ensure an agreed stewardship protocol for golden rice; this concerns such issues as maintaining quality of seed, quality of grain (labeling and storage) and best practice to ensure no commingling of golden rice within any facility that exports rice;
- Support processes for institutional development and agreement on stewardship protocol;
Help develop the relationships and mechanisms to maximize the delivery of Golden Rice to target areas in Bangladesh that are least served by current approaches to address vitamin A deficiency, following a standard stewardship guideline
Engagement
- Partnership, coordination and monitoring and evaluation
- Embedded within the Healthier Rice working group at BRRI, contribute to the development and implementation of work plans agreed by both IRRI and BRRI. Regularly update progress of the BRRI HRP Working Group and respond to issues as needed in consultation with the other members of IRRI HRP team.
- Map, identify, engage, and nurture partnerships with key Bangladeshi organizations that can help in the development and implementation of a stewardship program for Golden Rice.
- Facilitate the conduct of technical presentations, briefings, roundtable discussions, and meetings with key stakeholders from various agencies in Bangladesh;
- Coordinate closely with the communications and stakeholder engagement arms of the project in properly communicating the stewardship protocols for Golden Rice to target audiences and building support and acceptance of the product in Bangladesh.
Support the development of a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system in partnership with BRRI and other agencies
Delivery
- Finalization of an appropriate stewardship plan/protocol in support of successful deployment through engagement with BRRI and a series of consultation sessions with concerned institutions and organizations including BRRI, BINA, BARI, DoE, SCA, DAE, BADC, HKI, NGOs, private sector (seed, millers- domestic and export, wholesalers and retailer groups).
- Facilitate partnership between BRRI and the extension agents to develop best practice guidelines to ensure delivery of Golden Rice seed to farmers and also sharing knowledge on field agronomy through a trained group of people.
- Develop a whole farm stewardship checklist with R&D partners (e.g. BRRI, DAE, private sector & NGOs).
- Assist Senior Associate Scientist II – Healthier Rice Deployment to support the Bangladesh National Advisory Committees for Healthier Rice in providing a structured process in reviewing learning from ongoing deployment experiences.
- Assist Senior Associate Scientist II – Healthier Rice Deployment to develop metrics for each actor to assess their deployment plans in terms of model sustainability with ability to scale within existing market channels and government programs, and reaching beneficiaries i.e. there will be an agreed set of metrics for performance that guides each actor in deployment.
- Assist Senior Associate Scientist II – Healthier Rice Deployment to systematize the processes of engagement with key government and non-government and private sector agencies in the deployment of golden rice.
- Collaborate with the BRRI team(s) to develop and to implement M&E plan to document the progress of golden rice deployment and stewardship activities.
- Active documentation of meetings, briefings and other engagement activities flagging insights, action items and recommendations for continued engagement.
- Support events as needed, including developing message platforms, drafting agenda, identifying participants and serving as facilitator/moderator.
- Perform any other relevant duties as assigned by the supervisor from time to time.
Qualifications
Master's degree in Social Science, Extension, Marketing, Public Policy or other related discipline with at least 7 years of relevant experience, with leadership skills and managerial responsibility. Having a PhD degree in any of these disciplines would be an asset.
Skills Required
- Demonstrated ability to support and work closely with government institutions, NGOs and private sector
- Demonstrated gender awareness and commitment to inclusivity
- Extensive experience working in a multicultural environment
- Willingness and ability to work in high-pressure and challenging situations
- Experience in the fields of stewardship, deployment, agriculture extension, nutrition, public policy
- Has strong decision-making skills coupled with aptitude for working within a team environment
- Experience in implementing public advocacy programs, binding multi-stakeholder agreement
- Creative and quick learning ability with analytical independence
Location: Gazipur BRRI, Bangladesh
Salary Ranges: Basic (70667 - 130833 ) BDT per Month
Other Benefits: Housing Allowance: 30% of base pay per month, Transport Allowance: 14,400 BDT, Festival Bonus: 2 times each year, Contributory Provident Fund (CPF), Returning Mother Allowance: BDT-1,000 per month for 9 months to female employees post-delivery of a baby to support return to the workplace, Medical insurance coverage: maximum US$16,000/year and other admissible benefits |
