Associate, Standards & Assurance

The Rainforest Alliance is creating a more sustainable world by using social and market forces to protect nature and improve the lives of farmers and forest communities. To achieve our mission, we partner with diverse allies around the world to drive positive change across global supply chains and in many of our most critically important natural landscapes.

Our alliance spans 70 countries and includes farmers and forest communities, companies, governments, civil society, and millions of individuals. Together we work to protect forests  and biodiversity, take action on climate, and promote the rights and improve the livelihoods of rural people.

As an international nonprofit organization with more than 30 years of experience in sustainability transformation, we understand that the social and economic well-being of rural communities is tightly connected to ecosystem health. This knowledge has shaped our rigorous programs to advance sustainable land-use and commodity production.

At the Rainforest Alliance we combat climate change, protect forests and biodiversity, promote human rights, and improve livelihoods. The enormity of the social and environmental challenges we are facing requires working together in a broad alliance. This is why we bring farmers, forest communities, companies, and consumers together to change the way the world produces, sources, and consumes.

Why

To protect nature and improve lives it’s becoming increasingly urgent that we approach the way we use our land and produce food and other products in more sustainable ways. For this to succeed we need to fundamentally change the way that businesses operate and source, and the choices we all make as consumers.

How

Our growing global alliance aims to transform our relationship with our natural resources and each other, to create a better future for people and nature together.

The Rainforest Alliance encourages diversity and inclusion across the global organization. With this commitment to diversity, we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, color, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, ages, disability and any other protected group.

Position summary:

The Rainforest Alliance is looking for an Associate, Standards and Assurance (S&A), Mainland South East Asia to coordinate with and report to the Senior Manager, S&A Asia to work on the assurance and quality challenges in the countries Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and other countries as agreed in future, to address risk issues.

Working in close collaboration with the Country Director and country teams, Customer Success and other S&A staff, the S&A Associate will work to improve specific issues related to the implementation and auditing of the Rainforest Alliance 2020 Certification Program by Certificate Holders (CHs) and Certificate Bodies (CBs).

The S&A Associate will support on and implement the operational activities of the Global S&A department for Mainland South East Asia, helping to ensure the credibility and functioning of the Standard and Assurance system activities. The S&A Officer mainly supports in the license review process, training of CBs and regional staff and Associated Trainer Networks (ATNs) on the 2020 RA Standard and conducts country risk assessments on the main production and auditing contexts.

Responsibilities: 

The Rainforest Alliance’s Core Values are Impact, Change, Collaboration, Openness and Trust and as such they form the basis of the behaviours we demonstrate.

• Oversee the operation of the Rainforest Alliance certification program in the assigned countries and in coordination with senior management;
• Gives support, answers questions, gives information and advice - via e-mail and by phone - to the S&A team, Country Directors, overseas colleagues and CBs on the RA standards and the implementation of certification rules;
• Reviews and interprets audit results, as well as licences, checks credibility cases and compliance, solves problems and/or makes recommendations if necessary and as a Standards Officer, also handles and interprets certificates;
• Provide support to Senior Management in workshops, trainings and/or webinars based on training needs assessments and the training modules to CBs and occasionally to CHs and supply chain actors;
• Supports the implementation and execution of the Standards & Assurance Asia annual plan and activities, including observing audits;
• Contribute to country risk assessments and use this information to design and implement Quality of Implementation activities for the region. Manage reputational risks in coordination with S&A senior management and regional Management;
• Maintain an analysis for S&A management of the regional activities, including audits, non-conformities, quality of a sample of audit reports and licenses to evaluate the interpretations for the Standard and certification rules, information about selling/purchasing certified volumes along supply chain and makes recommendations if necessary;
• Initiate and organize the development and implementation of the annual plan together with the Senior Manager Asia, for the assigned countries and coordinate the annual plan with the broader regional/country plans to capture synergies;
• Provide input and contributes to country-specific projects where S&A is part of to prevent re-occurrence of credibility issues in the region;
• Organize consultation sessions for stakeholders (internal and external) to discuss adjustments to standards or assurance policies based on questions and/or needs received; and
• Works together with member monitoring and field teams to identify the need for standard contextualization, policy and guidance. Identifies assurance risks and passes this onto the CB Monitoring team and S&A management.

Qualifications: 

• Bachelor’s Degree in agronomy/rural development/sociology/environmental science/forestry or equivalent professional work experience;
• Minimum 3 years’ experience in sustainable agriculture certification, coffee, cocoa or tea supply chains or equivalent; 
• Proficient in Microsoft Excel, Word, and Outlook with a demonstrated experience in accounting software and working knowledge of PowerPoint;
• Outstanding interpersonal and communication skills, both written and verbal; 
• Fluency verbal and written communication skills in English and Vietnamese;
• Demonstrated commitment to the RA mission and values.; and
• Ability to travel a minimum of 25% per year in the region and/or internationally.

Salary:

Commensurate with experience.

Deadline: February 18, 2022

Notes:

Only candidates authorized to work in Vietnam will be considered.

If you have any questions about the job vacancy, please contact the HR department: [email protected]

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