Programme Specialist

The European Commission for the Control of Foot and Mouth Disease (EuFMD) plays a significant role in the animal health part of FAO’s programme to increase resilience of livelihoods to food and agriculture threats and crises (SO5).

The EuFMD has established a globally respected capacity for efficient delivery of training, in-country and online support to emergency preparedness, and Progressive Control Programmes is working in over 80 countries with and through the decentralized offices. Most recently, the HOLD-FAST strategy continues the focus upon Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) risk reduction but extends the scope of the preparedness and risk reduction activities to similar Transboundary Animal Diseases (TADs) which pose an immediate threat to the Member Nations (hereafter FAST is used for Foot-and-mouth and similar transboundary animal diseases).

The EuFMD is an Article XIV body responsible to its Member States and donors to deliver an extensive work programme on FMD emergency preparedness, response and control, to its 39 Member Nations, to a further 20 European neighbourhood countries, and to other regions through its arrangement with FAO decentralized offices. It manages the largest capacity-building programme in animal health in FAO with over 10,000 trainees recently taking its training courses.

The programme involves a considerable number of virtual and face-to-face events, as well as courses for its professional staff and consultants.

Technical input as well as operational delivery are entirely managed by the Commission Secretariat.

Full details are available in the EuFMD work programme.

Support to delivery of donor-funded work programmes of the EuFMD Commission at global, regional, sub-regional and country level.

The EuFMD workplan develops in three Pillars:

Pillar I – Improving preparedness for management of FMD and similar TADs (‘FAST disease’) crises by Members and across

Europe as a whole.

Pillar II – Reduced risk to Members from the FAST disease (FMD and similar TADS) situation in the European neighbourhood.

Pillar III – Sustaining and enhancing progress in the roll out of the GF-TADs Global Strategy for control of FMD, and on increasing security in the supply of effective FMD vaccines.

The EuFMD provides virtual and face-to-face courses and events and, considering the level of the progression along the FMD Progressive Control Pathway (PCP), identifies specific needs in the regions and the opportunities of making the best use of national and international expertise to assess the effectiveness of Risk Based Strategic Plans (RBSP). These plans focus on improving disease risk information and assisting in the design, implementation and evaluation of risk based surveillance and risk based control measures.

Project Management:

• Coordinate and/or provide operational support activities related, but not limited to:
  • project team formulation and delivery planning, liaise with relevant parties; ensure follow-up actions to ongoing projects;
  • budget and funding (programme/project preparation and submissions, progress reports, financial statements, etc.) and prepare related documents/reports (pledging, work programme, programme budget);
• Provide support for virtual meetings and face-to-face missions formulation and planning related to the organization of the EuFMD events in FAO headquarters and in the field; ensure communication with FAO headquarters, decentralized and regional offices to inform them of EuFMD activities in good time;
• Research, analyze and present information gathered from diverse sources including, but not limited to, feasibility studies, graphics and statistics using various tools to analyse EuFMD Projects;
• Ensure follow-up actions by evaluating related economical and financial impact also monitoring and updating of the EuFMD project status in FAO Field Programme Management Information System (FPMIS). Financial reporting to be provided;
• Contribute implementing the yearly plan for Procurement, Letters of Agreement and Framework agreements;
• Provide support with the recruitment process of NSHR
• Assist in internal processes and procedures improvements; Develop comprehensive documentation of virtual and face-to-face structure and operating procedures;
• Perform other duties, if required.

Information and Logistics management:

• Provide support in all EuFMD activities related to the organization and delivery of virtual, face-to-face or hybrid format events: such as build course pages for online courses (including preparation of material up to final upload onto the v-learning site and assist with trouble shooting) in direct liaison with international experts, maintain the database recording details of all participants trained and assist in dealing with general technical issues encountered while running a virtual event to ensure these activities are implemented in a relevant manner;
• Research and implement innovative methodologies, digital tools, software and automated approaches related to program activities, resources performance tracking, and delivery of virtual events;
• Provide support with the implementation of the EuFMD communication strategy and digitalization;
• Collect data from different sectorial sources to provide statistics related to the three pillar Workplan in order to contribute generating the EuFMD newsletter and technical reports and support communication within the EuFMD team;;
• Support the elaboration of EuFMD survey related to programme activities, including data analysis, statistics, reporting and recording system;
• Provide support with the Gender sensitive analysis and mainstreaming within EuFMD activities conducting desk research, reviewing collected data, suggesting and applying improvements.;
• Assist in enacting environmental sustainability within EuFMD programme conducting desk research, reviewing collected data, suggesting and applying improvements.
• Perform other duties, if required.