About Self Help Africa

Self Help Africa (SHA) is an international NGO dedicated to the vision of an economically thriving and resilient rural Africa. It has more than 50 years’ experience working to support sustainable rural development, including identifying, refining, and reinforcing various value chains. We work with farmers, farmer associations, cooperatives, agribusinesses, and whole communities to help farmers grow and sell more food, improve diets, diversify incomes, and make their livelihoods more sustainable and resilient to external shocks. To build resilience to climate change, we embed natural resource management within communities and promote adoption of Climate Smart Agriculture techniques.

SHA received funding from The Community Foundation of Ireland to support 1,000 smallholder farmers in Napak District for a period of 3 years (2023-2025). The project focuses on increasing climate smart agricultural production, improving marketing opportunities, financial inclusion, enterprise skills and improving household nutrition and WASH practices. Seasonal food gaps will be addressed through capacity building in post-harvest management, improved household hygiene and sanitation.

The 2nd outcome of the BUILD-Napak project is “Improved marketing, financial inclusion and enterprise skills for smallholder farmers, women and youth”. To enhance financial inclusion among the supported farmers, the BUILD project has encouraged the supported farmers to start
up VSLAs as a starting point of financial inclusion before they can be linked to other financial institutions.

Job Purpose:

Under the overall supervision of the Regional Programme Manager and the Head of Programmes. Self Help Africa seeks the services of a team of consultants to conduct community stakeholder dialogue meetings on the causes of food insecurity among the supported smallholder farmers in Poron and Apeitolim Sub-counties in Napak District, Karamoja Sub-region. The team will engage various stakeholders i.e the community, development partners, sub-county and district technical workers and political leadership, opinion leaders among others. The aim is to obtain basic information on the current food and nutrition security situation, understand the food insecurity causes, consequences and the current copying mechanisms within the community.

The overall task of the trainer will be to impart knowledge and skills in VSLA, SWAPP and financial literacy to the 4 CBTs and 4 VSLA Secretaries. The trainees will be required to roll out the same training to the 40 supported farmer groups with the focus of building the capacity of the groups to manage their VSLAs.

Key Responsibilities:

Responsibilities of the consultant include:
– Understand the principles of VSLA.
– Understand the aspects of Saving with a Productive Purpose.
– Understand the principles of financial literacy Conduct desk review on related assessments and surveys undertaken in the related field.

How to Apply:

The Terms of Reference for the assignment, along with other relevant documentation and our policies, can be downloaded here.

Qualified candidates should send completed applications by e-mail to: [email protected]
Please type “Consultant for training of trainers (TOT) on VSLA, Saving with a Productive Purpose (SWAPP) and financial literacy” – [your consultant(s)/Consultancy firm name]” in the subject line
of the e-mail.

The closing date for receiving the applications is no later than Close of Business on Monday 6th November 2023.

Please do not send certificates at this stage. Due to the anticipated high volume of applications, kindly note that only shortlisted applications will be contacted.

Self Help Africa strives to be an Equal Opportunities Employer

All candidates offered a job with Self Help Africa will be expected to sign Self Help Africa’s Safeguarding Policies and Code of Conduct as an appendix to their contract of employment and agree to conduct themselves in accordance with the provisions of these documents.  Specific roles may require Police/DBS/ vetting.