The main aim of the FAO Syria Country Office is to assist government to develop policies, programmes and projects to achieve food security and to reduce hunger and malnutrition, to develop the agricultural fisheries and forestry sectors, and to use their environmental and natural resources in a sustainable manner.

The Agriculture-based Livelihood Hub Specialist (ABLO) will work under the overall supervision of the FAO Representative in Syria, technical guidance from the Chief Technical Advisor (CTA) and direct supervision from the Building Local Resilience in Syria (BLRS) Project Manager; and support from the FAO Resilience Officer (RO) in the respective duty station.

The Agriculture-based Livelihood Specialist in Homs will be responsible for providing technical, capacity building and coordination capacity for the agriculture-based livelihoods planned under the BLRS project. The specific focus of the position is to strengthen the resilience of smallholder farmers to environmental pressures and shocks under BLRS and support capacity building efforts on context-specific climate smart agriculture (CSA) approaches, in collaboration with the FAO technical experts and supporting sub-national level sector coordination of actors in the Northeastern region of Syria, working on agriculture-based livelihoods and linking with central level coordination. The role will also support agro-processing activities planned under BLRS. 

Under the direct supervision of the Resilience Officer (RO), the Agriculture Based Livelihood Specialist (ABLS or ABLO) will accomplish below key responsibilities and tasks in Homs: 

• Collaborating closely with the Farmer Field School (FFS) specialist and his/her team, provide capacity building of BLRS targeted smallholder farmers on understanding climate shocks and acting accordingly, through jointly training FFS facilitators on context specific climate smart agriculture (CSA) approaches, for more resilient crop, livestock and water management practices. The ABLO will execute this in close collaboration with the FFS specialist and relevant FAO technical experts for the mentioned thematic areas,

• Collaborate closely with the Gender and Community Engagement Specialist (GCES) in Homs, to enhance gender mainstreaming in BLRS and prevention of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) activities, such as Dimitra Clubs and Discussion Group Series (DGS),  

• Establishing communication plartforms for dissemination of agriculture related information, to ensure that farmers are more aware of production or market-related risks and hazards, which may affect their agriculture-based livelihoods and entrepreneurship endeavours,

• Participate in all BLRS related food security and agriculture data collection and assessments conducted in the Hub or other identified locations as required. These will include community consultations, market assessments, periodic market monitoring to determine physical access to markets and marketing networks available to households to sell their production and their labour, agriculture seasonal performance monitoring, agro processing needs assessments and other BLRS planned assessments,  

• Provide humanitarian programme cycle (HPC) input from the Hub through needs analysis and contribution to the agriculture component of Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO) and Humanitarian Response Plan (HNO/HRP), 

• Provide adapted support and input to the improvement of the Early Warning Systems (EWS) at Hub level, including market monitoring, weather data monitoring and hazard mapping to track climate-related risks, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and monitoring of crop pest incidents. With a focus on enhancing quality, accessibility and integration of early warning information,  

• Under the guidance of the Resilience Officer (RO) in Homs, contribute to the establishment of partnerships with relevant agriculture-based stakeholders, especially agricultural institutions in Syria and collaborate in providing technical support, guidance and trainings to operational partners including production of capacity building and training reports,  

• Provide regular Hub input to the development and dissemination of various information products including food security updates, need analysis, early warning alerts for seasonal planning, which will be circulated among BLRS partners and other relevant stakeholders, 

• Conduct stakeholder meetings at Hub (i.e. decentralized) level to share operational level FAS information,

• Ensure proper consultation and coordination with technical staff of relevant line ministries at Hub level in coordination with the Resilience Officer in the governorate,   

• Develop and maintain a proper coordination mechanism with UN Agencies present in the Hub or Governorate and ensure that FAO’s role and mandate is well understood,

• Delegated by the Resilience Officer (RO) in Homs, attend relevant meetings and represent FAO in various fora at Hub / Governorate level,

• Liaise and coordinate with all stakeholders involved in Early Recovery and Livelihoods (ERL) Sector and Nutrition sectors, to enhance multi-sectoral coordination within the Hub, 

• Ensure preparation of Travel Authorizations and Security Clearances on time and 

• Perform any other duties requested by the Resilience Officer and BLRS management team. 

• University degree in Agriculture Sciences and Food Security, Climate Change or related field of study

• 5 years of minimum relevant experience in agriculture response to improve rural livelihoods, humanitarian and food security assessments, early warning systems (EWS) in agriculture-related matters, resilience, data analysis, coordination and humanitarian response 

• Working knowledge of English and Arabic 

• National of Syria

• Results Focus

• Teamwork

• Communication

• Building Effective Relationships

• Knowledge Sharing and Continuous Improvement

• Good communication, analytical, presentation and reporting skills and an excellent team player;

• Communication skills and ability to operate under pressure;

• Competency in the use of MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint computer packages, as well as with statistical software;

• Proven experience with UN regulations and procedures will be an added advantage;

• Proven experience in agriculture livelihoods programming, including stakeholder engagement in humanitarian, rural livelihoods, gender mainstreaming and development activities preferably with the UN or other international agencies;

• Familiarity with the agriculture sector in Syria is an asset;

• Good interpersonal skills