The IDH Sustainable Trade Initiative helps to accelerate and upscale sustainability within mainstream international commodity markets, driving sustainability from niche to norm. We build ambitious public private coalitions of companies, civil societyorganizations and governments and high-impact programs in order to benefit people, planet and profit. With a €130 million co-funding grant from the Dutch, Swiss and Danish Governments, IDH organizes scoping, development and implementation of public private partnerships in 18 sectors such as coffee, tea, cotton, electronics. IDH is a dynamic organization of about
45 staff members based in Utrecht, The Netherlands, with hubs in Vietnam, Indonesia and other countries. In the last year IDH has expanded its activities and now runs around 100 projects through 18 commodity programs in 50 countries, together with a wide range of private and public partners.
Starting operating in Vietnam in 2010, IDH has since established strong partnerships with businesses, government and NGOs working on coffee, tea, cocoa, spices/pepper and aquaculture.
The Central Highlands of Vietnam play a key role in the production of several agricultural commodities such as coffee, pepper and increasingly cocoa. The agricultural development in the Central Highlands contributed greatly to exports and economic growth in Vietnam. Thanks to economic liberalization, government leadership, and rises in the world coffee prices, Vietnam became the world’s second largest exporter of coffee and top producer of pepper globally.
Several local organizations and multinationals are looking at Vietnam as a top Asian producer for key commodities. However, the intensive agricultural development brought also considerable environmental challenges. Issues such as deforestation and groundwater depletion will need to be addressed at a landscape scale to sustain high production and trade into the future and to allow for future economic prosperity in the region. There seems to be a compelling business case for supply chains, Vietnamese government and local farmers to tackle these challenges collectively.
To that goal, IDH established the Sustainable Land and Water Program (SLWP) with focus on some key landscape globally, including the Central Highlands of Vietnam. The SLWP operated under the following fundamentals: An integrated and cross-sectoral perspective tailored to the local landscape and local needs; Engagement of all relevant stakeholders; Lead by a strong business driver and Long-term commitment towards prosperity.
IDH would like to strengthen its team with one Program Officer for the Sustainable Land and Water Program for Central Highlands, Vietnam
Job Purpose
The Program officer (PO) for the SLWP will administratively support IDH Vietnam, the Program Advisor and the Program Coordination Group (PCG) to develop and implement the SLWP in the Central Highlands, Vietnam. This includes assisting in convening local private and public sector partners as well as other stakeholders. The PO will support the SLWP team to build on existing partnerships established in Vietnam with international and national players in:
- Coffee, within the Sustainable Coffee Program (www.idhsustainabletrade.com/coffee [1])
- Spices, within the Sustainable Spices Initiative (www.sustainablespicesinitiative.com [2])
- Cocoa (www.idhsustainabletrade.com/cocoa [3])
- Tea (www.idhsustainabletrade.com/news/unilever-idh--rainforest-alliance-launc... [4] develop-sustainable-tea-in-vietnam)
The candidate will report directly to IDH Vietnam, the Program Adviser and the Program Coordination Group.
Key responsibilities
- Assist IDH, the PA and PCG on all aspects of project management
- Administrative support (a.o develop and maintain project documentation)
- Organizing a wide-variety of meetings chaired and/or organised by IDH and the PCG including:
- drafting agendas, collating papers and other relevant documents
- attending meetings, workshops and all project events and take/transcribe concise and accurate minutes
- establish and maintain Action Logs and effectively record and monitoractions to completion
- Support to prepare TORs, contracts for the program as required
- Develop, monitor communication activities associated with the program
- Liaise with program colleagues, stakeholders and national and local authorities on issues of program development and management and as instructed by IDH Vietnam, the PA and the PCG;
- Prepare reports (progress report, inception report, financial report…) for the program.
- Participate in team meetings; prepare action points and conclusions for meetings.
Requirements
- Based in Ha Noi with regular travel to the Central Highlands.
- Holding a university degree, preferably in foreign trade, international relations, economics or other relevant discipline.
- At least 5 years of working experience in a relevant position such as program assistant, program officer and so on, preferably in agricultural and rural development programs and/or land and water resource management programs.
- Solid understanding of the Vietnamese government system
- Experience in working with different stakeholders (eg Vietnamese government, private companies, NGOs,…) and in implementing multi-stakeholder programs
- Excellent convening and project support skills.
- Comfortable working in a team as well as independently developing new programs.
- Proactive, entrepreneurial, with a strong eye for detail
- Willingness to travel extensively.
- Fluent spoken and written English and Vietnamese.
- Experience in working in the Central Highlands will be considered an advantage
Terms and Conditions
This program is in its initial stages. Hence, we are initially looking for people that wish to work on one- year full-time basis, but with the possibility to develop into permanent positions. IDH offers a market conformed fee. For more information about IDH, please visit www.idhsustainabletrade.com [5].
For questions about this position, please contact Flavio Corsin at [email protected] [6]
Interested candidates should send their CV and application letter (in English) to Annemarie Woudstra,
Human Resources Officer, [email protected] [7] and Ta Thu Trang, Program Assistant, [email protected]. The deadline for the call for applications is 17.30 on Sunday, 22nd June 2014.