Shamia Chowdhury MPH M Sc

USAID's Agricultural Value Chains Project implemented by DAI USAID’s Agricultural Value Chain (AVC) Project aims to improve the Food Security by strengthening agricultural value chains in the Southern Delta of Bangladesh. AVC is funded by USAID under the Feed the Future initiative and it applies a market system approach in implementing its interventions. Improved nutritional practices and effective gender integration, among others, in different intervention of the project significantly impact the goals and objectives of the project. Responsibilities: Main responsibility of the position of Nutrition & Gender Specialist is to ensure the messages relating to improve nutritional practices and gender equity and participation are included in the value chain assessments, strategies and work plan. Specific responsibilities are: • Participate with the value chain assessments to ensure that nutrition and gender –based elements are taken into account and articulated within each food and non-food assessment; • Lead in the design and implementation of AVC’s Nutrition and Gender related interventions in the Project’s annual work plans; • Work closely with M&E staff to ensure that relevant indicators are disaggregated by gender data collection and analysis process provide meaningful information to re-direct program activities to better achieve gender outcomes; • Coordinate efforts with AVC colleagues, other partners and with USAID’s Health and Nutrition and Communications and Outreach specialists to develop and disseminate relevant nutrition messages; • Lead efforts, including capacity building activities, to increase gender participation in target value chains and ensure gender-inclusive program implementation; and • Provide supervision and technical support to local partners

Chars Livelihoods Programme(CLP) funded by DFID and implemented by MSP Responsibilities: The Direct Nutrition Intervention (DNI) Project is one of the many projects that CLP implements with the objective of improving the livelihoods of the extreme poor households living on island chars in north western Bangladesh. I am responsible for overall management and implementation of DNI project activities related to IYCF (Infant and Young Child Feeding), health and hygiene, family planning and nutrition issues that are known to exacerbate poverty. Specific responsibilities are: • Developing the implementation plans and strategic guidelines for the partner NGOs to follow; • Preparing the project budget and managing the contracts executed/signed with the partner NGOs to ensure that the tasks/activities stipulated in the contracts are properly implemented and the targeted results are achieved; • Ensuring that the relationships with partner NGOs and all other key stakeholders, such as GOB health and family planning officials (especially who are responsible for public health and nutrition) at the Upazila and District levels and Union Health and Family Welfare Centers, Community Clinics are amicable, productive, mutually beneficial and conducive to a long term relationship; • Making field visits to monitor activities, guide nutrition staff and suggest ways of improvement; • Reviewing expenditure of partner NGOs to ensure that expenditure is justified by performance; • Preparing the scripts for folk songs, drama, etc. to disseminate the nutrition related messages to wider community; • Assessing the training needs of staff for building their capacity and accordingly preparing the plans for different training; • Preparing training, BCC and IEC materials and project implementation guidelines; and • Conducting/facilitating training/orientation sessions, meetings, and workshops and disseminate outcomes.

Responsibilities: • Providing technical inputs for developing nutrition related materials and messages to be used in the program activities including training sessions and media campaigns; • Leading/facilitating training sessions on ENA and nutrition for Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) staff with the aim of better integrating messages into their work; • Monitoring the quality of the Field Facilitators and Volunteer Health Committee (VHC) training through regular observation and assessment of their activities and organizing refresher training as required; • Attending the advocacy sessions with MoHFW officials on health and nutrition related topics; • Maintaining regular contact with Save the Children Program Coordinator for smooth and efficient implementation of activities; and • Preparation and submission of detailed training reports, monthly activity plans and other reports.

Nutrition education and Peer counciling on IYCF. Nutrition awareness to Adolescent girls