Business Support Assistant (Self Reliance) SC-4, Cox's Bazar

ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT

The United Nations World Food Programme is the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. The mission of WFP is to help the world achieve Zero Hunger in our lifetimes. Every day, WFP works worldwide to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry and that the poorest and most vulnerable, particularly women and children, can access the nutritious food they need. WFP provides life-saving assistance to more than 850,000 Rohingya refugees and over 300,000 most vulnerable households in the local communities. WFP implements a range of programmes including integrated food and nutrition assistance, school feeding activities, emergency preparedness, and tailored livelihoods programme to support the most vulnerable population.

JOB PURPOSE

Reporting to the Head of Unit – Self-Reliance, the incumbents core responsibility is to support the partners of WFP to implement the programme, ensuring timely fund management, in collaboration with relevant units, in line with the donors perspective. They should have proven partner management skills, and technical experience in programming.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (not all-inclusive)

Business Support Processes:

• Review the budgets submitted by the Partners and ensure alignment with the FLA and Finance guidelines.
• Take overall lead on WINGS system and facilitate the grant-making process on time, such as raising PR/PO, and closure of POs. 
• Manage workflow process for all types of grants, ensuring timeliness and accuracy of all tasks such as SES posting, cash forecasting and monthly invoicing along with tracking.
• Work closely with FLA unit for timely signing of FLAs and creation of POs.
• Work closely with CBT units and finance unit for facilitating the fund release process (reimbursement and advance).
• Produces monthly internal grant data statistics, reports, and custom analysis as needed, for the unit, which includes FLAs vs expenditures [head wise] and current FR status and TDDs. 
• Work closely with relevant units for resource release, disbursement, cash pipeline to ensure smooth distribution, and respond to complaints and other finance/administrative related issues.
• Review fund release requests and prepared Cash Release Note (CRN), Purchase Requisition Form (PRF), request for petty cash, monthly cash forecasting, estimating operational and CBT expenditures, prepared PO Balance statement, fund statements etc.
• Perform monthly invoice matching in the Invoice Tracking System (ITS) for transactions and payment.
• Develop, maintain, and ensure proper grants records are in place and consistently followed, ensuring that project documentation is compliant, SOPs are up to date, and financial procurement procedures are followed by the NGO partner organisation. 
• Manage digital records of the team’s documentation. 
• Take minutes for meetings as directed by Head of Unit
• Any other duty assigned by supervisor/management

Programme Implementation:

• Conduct periodical field visit to assess the performance of cooperating partners implementation, considering the technical as well as facilitation skills. 
• Manage corporate processes involving WFP’s cooperating partners, such as assessment of Request for Proposal (RFP)/project proposals for Partner selection, conduct/ facilitate annual CP performance evaluation etc.), and provide inputs for reports and agreement development.
• Follow standard emergency preparedness practices to ensure WFP can quickly respond and deploy needed resources to affected areas at the onset of a crisis.
• Assist to maintain good relationship with all relevant partners and stakeholders including concerned government authorities.
• Assist in preparing detailed monitoring plans, qualitative and quantitative reports, including recommended follow-up actions to ensure program goals are achieved, share with cooperating partners and WFP and ensure follow-up actions are completed on a timely basis.

STANDARD MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

Education: Undergraduate or master’s degree in Economics, Business Administration, Social Science, Development Studies or other relevant area.

Experience: Minimum three years of experience, including one year in project implementation or budget management.

Knowledge & Skills:    

• Strong computer skills (including Excel, Word and PowerPoint) 
• Basic accountancy capacity (a. ability to read and revise a project budget, b. capacity to check financial supporting documents, c. standard procurement)
• Appetite for exploring and experimenting with new ideas and approaches.
• Ability to work as part of a team, participating in open dialogues and valuing diverse opinions of others, regardless of gender, culture, background, experience, or country assignment.  

Languages: Fluency in English & Bengali (both oral and written) is required. Fluency in Chittagonian dialect is an advantage.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Contract Duration          : 12 months

Type of Contract           : Service Contract (SC4)

Duty Station                   :Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

Monthly Salary              : BDT. 85,766

Postion No                       : One (1).