Job Title: Senior Project Officer

Tenure of Employment: The appointment will be made on a one year fixed term contract, with the possibility of extension

Duty Location: Karbi Anglong, Assam

Reporting to: Project Manager, Grassroots Tea Corporation 

Qualification: Degree in Rural Management/Livelihoods/Social Entrepreneurship/Gender & Development Studies from reputed institution.

Experience: Not less than 3 year in community organisation, social enterprise development

 

Job Descriptions

The responsibilities of the Block Level Senior Project Officer would:

1. Identify villages/ clusters and RWEs, conduct Outreach survey, and share data as per the required format/systems.

2. Assist in selection of the RWEs for the project interventions.

3. Visit and engage with RWEs and community members on a regular basis, develop enduring relationship with them and ensure that the project activities are on track.

4. Empower RWE by making individual visits to their households, and conducting group meetings.

5. Visit RWE households among small tea growers on a regular basis, develop enduring relationship with them and ensure that the project activities are on track.

6. Empower RWEs in small tea farmer households, conducting group meetings and training sessions.

7. Help, empower and monitor the Village Level Officers in performing the above functions.

8. Liaise and manage relationships with various stakeholders.

9. Take all steps to help RWEs among small tea farmers to set up Homebased tea processing, build their collectives, set up units of aggregation, convert them into relevant statutory bodies, ensure legal membership rights to RWEs and prepare business plans.

10. Take all steps to determine places of operation at home and at the aggregation centre, set up processing infrastructure, negotiating with machinery suppliers and the installation of required equipments, help with operation readiness to run and manage the RWEs post the commencement of commercial operations.

11. Manage, supervise and coordinate project activities for RWE operations, such as-

    1. Seting up the necessary machine units and a safe environment for processing of tea at home and sorting and packaging at the aggregation centre.

    2. Managing the workflow for processing of tea.

    3. Ensuring efficiency during the process.

    4. Overseeing the quality assurance of tea cultivation, plucking, transporting, processing, sorting, grading and packaging of tea.

12. Liaise and manage relationships with various stakeholders at village and district level, and organize and arrange for meetings.

13. Assist in updating training timelines and calendar, in collaboration with assistant program manager.

14. In conjunction with the above, the Block Level Senior Project Officer will do the following tasks:

    1. Establish goals for processing of tea, and coordinate a plan to meet those goals.

    2. Ensure green leaf are of required quality and standards.

    3. Ensure production stays on schedule and meet quality standards.

    4. Write production reports.

    5. Analyze production data and optimize for efficiency.

    6. Direct an efficient layout of equipments and flow of materials.

    7. Ensure workers and equipments meet performance and safety requirements.

    8. Watch for hiccups in the process, and look for opportunities to improve operations.

    9. Hire, train, and assess the performance of workers, when necessary

    10. Support RWEs and team members as questions, concerns, or feedback arise.

    11. Supervise team members and delegate tasks to team members and RWEs.

    12. Communicate with other team members, such as the accounts and financial department to record expenses and establish budgets, or the Project Manager to ensure the delivery of products.

    13. Support and facilitate the RWEs in legal and financial compliances.

    14. Facilitate the necessary capacity building for the RWEs to be able to successfully run the processing units, manage the enterprise, manage and liaison with crucial stakeholders, provide decision making support, enable leadership development and facilitate team working among the RWEs.

Required Competencies

1. Hard-working professional with at least 3 years of experience in the implementation of women-oriented livelihood/ entrepreneurship specific programmes.

2. Willingness to work in close collaboration with stakeholders including government, banking institutions and private sector

3. The candidate must have basic knowledge about the tea sector, and good understanding of gender & livelihood issues in general. 

4. Willingness to be based in Assam and travel extensively.

5. The candidate must have good knowledge of written and spoken Karbi and/or Assamese and English.

6. The candidate must have basic computer skills such as Excel and Word.