Country Director

IDH, The Sustainable Trade Initiative helps to accelerate and upscale sustainability within mainstream international commodity markets, driving sustainability from niche to norm. We build ambitious public private coalitions of companies, civil society organizations and governments and high-impact programs in order to benefit people, planet and profit. With co-funding from the Dutch, Swiss, Danish and Norwegian Governments, and from business partners, IDH organizes scoping, development and implementation of public private partnerships in 11 sectors such as coffee, tea, aquaculture, apparel.

IDH is a dynamic organization of 60 staff members based in Utrecht, The Netherlands, with hubs in Asia and Africa. In the last year IDH has expanded its activities and now runs around 600 projects in 50 countries, together with a wide range of private and public partners.

Starting operating in Vietnamin 2010, IDH has since established strong partnerships with businesses, government and NGOs working on coffee, tea, spices/pepper, aquaculture and apparel/footwear. In 2014, IDH also launched a program aimed at using the public-private approach to addressing the key sustainability issues in the Central  Highlands of Vietnam, which plays a key role in the production of several agricultural commodities.

IDH would liketo strengthen its team with a Country Director IDH Vietnam (based in Hanoi)

Job Purpose

In IDH we work in a matrix type organization. The commodity Program Directors (PDs) are responsible for the worldwide implementation of their programs. The Country Director IDH Vietnam provides advice and co-designs the commodity country strategy and actively strengthens the implementation with senior convening and stakeholder management activities. Furthermore, the Country Director IDH Vietnam leads and inspires the IDH team in Vietnam.

The Country Director IDH Vietnam will provide day to day management to IDH Vietnam in respect of the development of IDH´s Aquaculture, Coffee, Spices, Tea, Initiative for Sustainable Landscape (ISLA) and Apparel programs in Vietnam.

Keyresponsibilities

1. Relevant sectors: Aquaculture, Coffee, Spices, Tea, ISLA and Apparel

- Contribute to the design of the IDH Vietnam program on the above commodities/ programs;
- Support the relevant program managers/officers in monitoring the implementation of the programs;
- Co-develop and implement the IDH-Vietnam agenda to promote responsible agrochemical management, especially related to Aquaculture, Coffee, Spices, Tea and ISLA. Specifically:

• Aquaculture
  
  • Support the implementation of the Farmers In Transition (FIT) Fund
  • Act as member of the PPP Fisheries Taskforce

• Coffee
  
  • Support and co-supervise with the Program Director Coffee and the Global Coffee Platform (GCP) Secretariat the implementation of the GCP in Vietnam and of any Field Level Projects
  • Act as a member of the Vietnam Coffee Coordination Board (VCCB)
  • Act as co-chair of the VCCB sub-committee on policy and sustainability

• Spices
  
  • Support the implementation of the Sustainable Spices Initiative (SSI) in Vietnam
  • Act as co-chair of the PPP Pepper/Spices taskforce
  • Promote the IDH Responsible Agrochemical Management agenda
  • Support and supervise any Field Level Projects on spices

• Tea
  
  • Support the implementation of the IDH/Unilever and IDH/Vitas sustainable tea programs in Vietnam
  • Act as member of the PPP Tea taskforce
  • Act as member of the Steering Committee for sustainable tea
  • Promote the IDH Responsible Agrochemical Management agenda

• ISLA
  
  • Support and co-supervise with the ISLA Manager the design and implementation of the program in the Central Highlands of Vietnam
  • Co-chair the Agrochemical Taskforce under the Partnership for Sustainable Agriculture of Vietnam (PSAV)

• Apparel
  
  • Support and co-supervise with the Apparel Program Director and other team members the design and implementation of the program, especially nurturing the relationships with national-level public sector and Vietnamese representatives of the private sector

2. Assess with the relevant Program Directors the potential for additional programs and their design and implementation as required.

3. IDH General:

• Coordinate the implementation of the overall IDH program within Vietnam, including the relation with the local representatives of IDH’s institutional donors (Dutch government, SECO, Danida);
• Represent IDH at meetings relevant to the IDH Vietnam programs;
• Coordinate activities related to IDH being a legal entity in Vietnam and any post-registration procedures linked to that;
• (Co)-Supervise staff based in Vietnam.

4. Share lessons learnt from program implementation in Vietnam to inform the development of the IDH program globally.

5. As needed, advise IDH management on other sectors of interest to IDH, with special focus on Vietnam.

Requirements

• Working and thinking at Master’s degree level, in agribusiness or related area preferred.
• Based in Hanoi, Vietnam.
• At least 10 years of working experience in a relevant position such as Country Director, Program Director, Program Manager, preferably in agricultural and rural development programsand/orApparel & Footwear industry.
• Extensive experience working within a private organization or in managing private sector relationship.
• Extensive experience in working with different stakeholders (e.g Vietnamese government, private companies, NGOs etc.) and in implementing multi-stakeholder programs.
• Comfortable working in a team as well as independently developing new programs.
• Proactive, entrepreneurial, with a strong eye for detail.
• Willingness to travel.
• Fluent spoken and written English.Knowledge of spoken/written Vietnamese an advantage.

Terms and Conditions
IDH is looking for people that wish to work on one-year full-time consultancy basis, but with the possibility to extend. IDH offers acompetitive fee. For more information about IDH, please visit www.idhsustainabletrade.com. For questions about this position, please contact Flavio Corsin at [email protected]

How to apply

Interested candidates should send their CV/resume, application letter (in English) and anexplanation of their vision on IDH activities in Vietnam, to Iris van Oort (HR Officer) at [email protected] before 23 June 2017.