Business Support Assistant

**Title**: Business Support Assistant (Assistant to the Director)

**Contract Type**: SC

**Level**: SB-3/5

**Duty station**: Brasilia, Brazil

**Duration**: 12 months

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**Background**

The World Food Programme (WFP) is the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. Finding long-term and sustainable solutions to chronic hunger is also a part of the WFP mandate. The WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger located in Brazil was launched in November 2011 and has been created as international centre of excellence. The Centre is a partnership between WFP and the Brazilian government, and its aim is to promote south to south cooperation, and provide support to governments in Africa, Asia and Latin America in capacity development in the areas of School Feeding, Nutrition and Food Security.

The Centre is an innovation that seeks to respond government demands for technical support to strengthen their national capacities and knowledge on sustainable school feeding and to support them in the design and management of healthy and sustainable national school feeding and other hunger programmes.

The Centre is looking for a highly motivated proactive person to act as Business Support Assistant/ Assistant to the Director. Potentially an interesting position for a dynamic professional with good writing and networking skills, good education background, exceptional language skills in Portuguese and English to assist the Director and the Centre of Excellence’s team.

**Supervision**: Under the direct supervision of the Centre´s Director, the Business Support Assistant reports to him and will work in close collaboration with the Human Resources Unit.

**Accountabilities**: The Business Support Assistant will be responsible for the following duties:

- Manage the Director’s calendar, meeting schedule/appointments and travel plans.
- Arrange meetings/appointments on behalf of the Director.
- Liaise with the Director about relevant events and meetings and brief him/her on matters to be considered prior to it.
- Prepare briefing materials and agendas for the Director for use on official trips or special meetings and convene the weekly staff meetings, including preparing meeting notes.
- Participate in the elaboration of briefings for the WFP Executive Director Office.
- Liaise with internal and external partners and donors to support in the development and strengthening of relations, by assisting the Director and office staff.
- Prepare briefs and other documents explaining partners policies/trends.
- Make presentations and participate in meetings on behalf of the Director, whenever requested, including meetings to introduce the Centre or to maintain partners updated about office´s activities.
- Identify and extract information from various sources to draft, review, and edit of moderate to complex documents such as official communications, Letters of Agreements, reports, proposals, work plans, publications, ensuring adherence to WFP’s standards and policies.
- Review all incoming correspondence, gather background documentation for correspondence requiring action by the Director and follow up with office units to ensure that deadlines for responses are met.
- Review all outgoing correspondence to be signed by the Director for composition and style as well as grammatical accuracy, factual correctness, adequacy of treatment, and compliance to WFP procedures.
- Support visa processing for the Director and staff travelling on behalf of WFP.
- Carry out security clearance procedures related to the Director’s official travels and ensure staff travelling on behalf of WFP carry out their security clearance.
- Support the organization and participate in meetings, conventions, missions, events, and seminars, both virtually and on-site, and provide broad administrative and logístical support to office members and to the Director in these activities.
- Support the coordination and implementation of projects and joint actions.
- Undertake standard data entry tasks in accordance with defined systems, to ensure information is organised and readily available for business team.
- Follow up and assist in administrative issues, including in ERP/SAP systems.
- Coordination and liaison with all business unit in the Centre to ensure that proper follow-up actions are taken, to maintain flow of information, as well as to resolve issues and clarify or obtain additional information.
- Operates centralized telephone system, screen, assess and refer telephone calls and enquires to appropriate staff; handle matters of protocol; provide information on a variety of questions such as the office’s programme and activities as well as handle sensitive information with diplomacy and discretion.
- Manages main entrance doors access for visitors and security control; greets visitors and directs them to appropriate staff.
- Manages meeting rooms calendar and schedule ap