1. About TechnoServe

TechnoServe works with enterprising people in the developing world to build competitive farms, businesses, and industries. We are a non-profit organization that develops business solutions to poverty by linking people to information, capital, and markets. Our work is rooted in the idea that given the opportunity, hard working women and men in even the poorest places can generate income, jobs and wealth for their families and communities. With five decades of proven results, we believe in the power of private enterprise to transform lives.

TechnoServe is committed to advancing gender equality guided by our Gender Equality Policy. which necessitates actions focused on both our programming and our corporate practices and culture. By investing in gender equality and women’s economic empowerment, we increase project effectiveness, strengthen our organization, and mobilize greater resources. We recognize that maximizing the inclusive economic growth that is required to achieve widespread prosperity requires the full and unencumbered participation of women and girls. Our Gender Equality Policy and commitment to programmatic excellence necessitates that our work and our organization engage, empower, and benefit both women and men.

2. Program background

Climate Resilience through Empowering Women (CREW) is a five-year project implemented aims to strengthen the climate resilience of coffee growing communities while promoting the economic empowerment of marginalized women. The project is expected to catalyse changes at the farm/household, wet mill, and wider industry levels to adapt to a changing climate with a particular focus on women who despite playing a critical role in coffee production and processing are economically marginalized and routinely excluded from positions of leadership, influence and decision-making. The ultimate beneficiaries will be 76,000 women and men and 80 coffee processing businesses in coffee-growing communities in targeted zones of Sidama and Oromia.

3. Position description

The Senior Gender Coordinator will work closely with the field level coffee practice team in Sidama and Oromia and report to the Senior Gender Advisor at TechnoServe’s Ethiopia Office. She/he is expected to support gender integration within the CREW program by supporting staff capacity building, facilitating TechnoServe’s gender training for farmers, providing technical support for other program actors, and contributing to reporting and program learning.

Specifically, the Senior Gender Coordinator is responsible to work with women and men in coffee-growing households to increase women’s access to information, resources, and voice and influence in coffee communities. This will be facilitated through our household empowerment approach, women’s leadership workshops, and technical support with the coffee agronomy program.

The Senior Gender Coordinator will facilitate training and provide technical support to privately- or cooperatively-owned wet mills to create more equitable opportunities for women’s inclusion and benefits as members, workers, and leaders.

Duties and Responsibilities:

Key responsibilities include:

Technical and logistical Support

• Producer level:

• Coordinate and deliver leadership training to women in coffee growing households

• Collaborate with and advise agronomy advisors and senior agronomy advisors to support implementation of CREW’s household empowerment approach

• Collaborate with agronomy advisors and senior agronomy advisors on the inclusion of women in stumping incentive activities

• Wet-mill level:

• Coordinate and deliver women’s leadership training at the wet-mill level

• Work with business advisors to assist wet mills to train leaders on gender equitable business practices and develop and implement gender action plans to support the inclusion of women in wet-mills as workers and full-time elected positions.

• Support business advisors to establish and monitor grievance mechanism to respond to and address workers’ complaints (e.g., GBV, child labour, and sexual harassment)

• Enhance the good relationship with local stakeholders and community leaders at local level.

Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning:

• Track women’s leadership attendance records

• Contribute to monitoring efforts on gender-related topics

• Contribute to reporting on gender-related topics

• Provide support on other tasks assigned by supervisor

Job Requirements

4. Required Knowledge, skills and experience

• Bachelor’s Degree preferably in sociology, gender studies, social work and/or agriculture or plant science

• At least two years professional experience preferably on gender or social inclusion or in community development projects with special focus on gender equality

• Experience coordinating training and/or meeting logistics at community-level

• Experience facilitating training at community-level; gender-related training preferred

• Strong interest in advancing women’s economic empowerment

• Excellent planning and organizational skills

• Ability to work as part of a team as well as independently, and to work collaboratively, with a flexible approach.

• Strong interpersonal communication skills

• Fluent communication skills in local languages (Oromifa for Bulehora), Amharic and English (listening, speaking and writing)

• Computer literate

How to Apply

Qualified and interested applicants should apply using THIS LINK and submit a cover letter resume as a single document (either Word or PDF) by June 03, 2024. Applications will be reviewed and considered as received/on a rolling basis. Only applicants meeting minimum qualifications will be contacted. Please note that we are not accepting CVs that are not sent through the indicated link.  

We encourage all qualified individuals who share TechnoServe's vision of improving the lives of others through proven business solutions to apply.

With our commitment to diversity, we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and affirmative action employer and do not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, color, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, HIV/AIDS status, protected veteran status, disability and all other protected classes.

We are also proud of our commitment to protecting staff, partners, and beneficiaries from abuse and exploitation and thoroughly vet all final candidates through rigorous background and reference checks.

If you have a disability that affects your ability to use our online system to apply for a position at TechnoServe please contact the Human Resources at recruitment@tns.org or call +12027854515.