Senior Nutrition Specialist
WorldFish, Bangladesh

Location: Dhaka, Bangladesh

Application Deadline: 14 September 2021

Type of contract: Fixed term contract

Language(s) required: English (native/fluent writing and oral skills)

About WorldFish

WorldFish is an international, non-for-profit research organization that works to reduce hunger, malnutrition and poverty by improving fisheries and aquaculture. With a 45-year track record of leading-edge science, WorldFish generates research evidence and innovations to inform sustainable practices and inclusive policies that enable better livelihoods and healthier diets for millions of poor people, particularly women, who depend on fish for food, nutrition and income. WorldFish is a member of CGIAR, the world’s largest global partnership on agriculture research and innovation for a food secure future. Headquartered in Penang, Malaysia, and with regional offices across Africa, Asia and the Pacific, WorldFish leads the cross-disciplinary CGIAR Research Program (CRP) on Fish Agri-Food Systems (FISH).

About the Position

WorldFish, Bangladesh Office is hiring a Senior Nutrition Specialist in its USAID-funded ‘ECOFISH II’ project in order to meet its vision: Be the research partner of choice, delivering high impact, transformative and equitable fisheries and aquaculture solutions to reduce poverty and malnutrition in Bangladesh and South Asia. The key objective of the ECOFISH II project is to improve the resilience of the Coastal-Marine and Meghna River ecosystems and livelihoods of communities reliant on the coastal fisheries. ECOFISH II will focus on the impacts of livelihood interventions and increased hilsa catch, catfish amp; biodiversity conservation, blue food production in Bangladesh marine waters on the household nutrition in the Zone of Resilience (ZoR) and lower Meghna region. Besides, the project has taken up a plan for assessing the potential of producing safe and nutritious dried fish, fish powder and value added products from small-scale fisheries (SSF) catch of pelagic small fish in Cox’s Bazar region. The Senior Nutrition Specialist will work in ECOFISH II project and WorldFish, Bangladesh, in general, to promote the production of dried fish and other value-added fish products from marine pelagic small fish catch under the direct supervision of Team Leader of EcoFish II and guidance of HQ Global Leader on Aquatic Food System. S/he will be also responsible to assess the acceptability of dried small marine fish and value added fishery products at households level, especially to provide nutrient-rich aquatic diets for children and women.

Responsibilities

• Assess the availability of pelagic small fish from artisanal marine catches, their volume, species composition and quality at landing.
• Assess the current practices of post-harvest processing and utilization of the marine small fish and its value chain, especially in USAID’s Zone of Resilience, Cox’s Bazar area.
• Promote application of better and proven low-cost practices for improving preservation of landed small fish to reduce post-harvest losses.
• Promote production of safe and nutritious dried fish, fish powder, and other products, through engagement of fishers’ women, following community approaches.
• Improve the safe storage of the fisheries products to increase shelf-life and assist in packaging and branding.
• Develop social marketing campaign, using multiple approaches to generate local awareness for increasing demand for nutritious fish-based food products.
• Supervise and conduct training of nutrition field facilitators in collection of data including anthropometric measures, biochemical nutrition markers and social behavioral practices and changes.
• Develop links with other sectors nutrition and health, food and education for the inclusion of dried fish products in programs and policies.
• Appraise the progress of work, targets and outputs to the Team Leader/Country Director/Nutrition Research Leader, HQ.

• Publish the research findings in collaboration with the senior scientists and research peers in international journals.

• Any other task assigned by supervisors as per need.

Requirements

This job is open to Bangladesh Nationals with the following skills and qualifications:

• Master of Science in Nutrition Science, Nutrition and Food Science, Biochemistry, Food Engineering/Fish Technology or relevant discipline from a reputed university and institution. A candidate having a PhD and /or high quality publications will be given preference.
• At least 7 years practical working experience in human nutrition-related activities in private/public/development sector.
• Having experience in w

Job Rewards and Benefits