About Proforest

Proforest focuses on the production base and supply chains of agricultural and forestry commodities including soy, sugar, rubber, palm oil, cocoa, coconut, beef and timber. We have more than twenty years of practical experience in supporting companies, governments, communities and partners, to establish responsible production and sourcing practices in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and North America.   

We support companies with direct action to tackle environmental and social risks throughout a supply chain. We also work with governments, companies, and  multistakeholder organisations, in order to address systemic issues beyond the supply chain, within a landscape or a sector, to deliver positive outcomes at scale. We bring expertise in these environmental and social issues that drive our work, including protecting and restoring forests and natural ecosystems, conserving biodiversity, advancing gender equality and human rights. 

Training at Proforest

Proforest is well known and well regarded in the sustainability sector (with focus on agricultural commodities and forestry) for its range of training, with recognition of the technical experience and knowledge that our teams provide, as practitioners in responsible / sustainable production and sourcing. Training is an important part of our work and as we grow, we want to ensure that the materials and resources we use are of the best quality and develop alongside the work that we do.

We have a long track-record of running in-person courses, including both classroom and field-based components. These include both public courses and bespoke training for companies, NGOs or governments, as well as endorsed courses for specific certification schemes and sustainability initiatives. Our training is complemented by development of practical guidance, often combined with support for users. We have also built considerable expertise in running webinars and online training workshops. In early 2021 we launched the online Proforest Academy, building on our years of elearning provisioning.

The next step, and main objective for this role, is to develop an integrated strategy to expand the reach of our portfolio of practical courses, guidance and eLearning materials, aligned to our projects and programmes globally. As the organisation expands, we also need to focus on staff training to ensure we offer professional development to our people and enable them to do their jobs effectively. We are currently rolling out a global competency programme to identify and deliver technical training globally.

Responsibilities

We are looking for a strategic training lead who can help to support the development and deployment of our training and capacity development. This will include working with regional directors and their teams as well as our global training team to develop a clear training strategy, overseeing making our training materials more accessible, systematic and integrated, and overseeing the quality of the training we provide. Responsibilities include:

• Develop a global training strategy in close collaboration with the regional directors and the global training team
• Maintain an overview of all internal and external training across the organisation
• Manage our library of training content to identify and enable re-use and re-purposing
• Oversee delivery of training courses, looking for global efficiencies and knowledge sharing
• Upskill trainers in pedagogical theory, in relation to both content production and delivery
• Provide quality control on training material, especially external training
• Support on client-specific training requests, guiding teams on content and format to meet requirements
• Support innovation and development of tools to deliver training
• Develop a robust M&E system for our training activities
• Have oversight of the global training budget, income and resources (owned and managed by each region)
• Work with the communications team to promote training to relevant audiences

Categories of training at Proforest:

1. Public courses, including endorsed courses for certification schemes and sustainability initiatives (e.g. Lead Auditor or Licensed Assessor courses)
2. Programme courses and capacity building for specific audiences, including mentoring programmes
3. Client-specific courses at both production and supply chain level
4. Internal training for Proforest staff and partners

These are offered face-to-face, online or in hybrid modes, depending on audiences.

Skills and Experience

This is an opportunity for a former practitioner or trainer who is looking for a more strategic role in a global organisation. We are looking for the following skills and experience:

• Knowledge of responsible sourcing and responsible production in agricultural commodities, or sustainability more broadly, including environmental and social issues
• Solid experience in designing and delivering training or teaching including use of different media
• Experience of managing a global training programme
• Strong understanding of how training needs to be adapted to different audiences, including corporate, government, NGO, technical experts and civil society participants
• Experience with in-person and online training and use of technology to augment or enhance training
• Familiarity with Docebo LMS is beneficial, though general familiarity with different LMS is also welcome
• Global experience, working with distributed teams across time zones, languages and cultural contexts
• Fluent in English. Knowledge of Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian Bahasa, French or Chinese is a benefit

Benefits

Full-time role, based in one of our Europe offices (Oxford, UK or Leiden, NL)

£40,000 - £55,000 depending on experience

To apply: Please send your CV, a cover letter and confirmation that you are eligible to work in the UK or the Netherlands to recruitment@proforest.net

Deadline: Monday, January 31st