Posted:Oct 3
By:Hiring Kenya
Company Details
Industry:
Maritime
Description:
We rebuild tropical fisheries with coastal communities Blue Ventures develops transformative approaches for catalysing and sustaining locally led marine conservation. We work in places where the ocean is vital to local cultures and economies, and are committed to protecting marine biodiversity in ways that benefit coastal people. Our story started over a decade ago, surveying coral reefs in the Mozambique channel. Vezo communities in southern Madagascar were concerned about the decline of their fisheries, so we supported one village to experiment with closing off a small section of their octopus gleaning area for a few months, to see whether this might boost productivity. When the closure was re-opened, communities experienced a huge increase in octopus landings and fisher incomes. As news of this remarkable fishery boom spread, neighbouring communities started copying this approach. Crucially, this sparked interest in more ambitious coastal management efforts, leading to the creation of the country’s first Locally Managed Marine Area (LMMA) governed by a small network of fishing villages. Since then, this temporary fishery closure model has gone viral along thousands of kilometres of Madagascar’s coastline, spawning a grassroots marine conservation revolution with 64 more LMMAs established to date. Today, 11% of the island’s seabed is managed by communities, for communities. Our work is about much more than octopus. These experiences have guided our journey searching for new approaches to demonstrate that marine conservation can be in everyone’s interest, and that taking less from our ocean can give us much much more.
Job Description
Summary job description
- Our Partner Network team is responsible for the scoping, selection, relationship building, and ongoing stewardship of civil society and non-governmental organisations that partner with Blue Ventures globally. Partnership is at the core of Blue Ventures’ strategy, to seek out and support community-focused organisations by providing funding and technical assistance that can catalyse, expand, and sustain partners' work in establishing community-based fisheries management and locally managed marine areas.
- The Partner Network team is responsible for building and maintaining the relationship between Blue Ventures and these partners. This includes scoping and identifying potential civil society and non-governmental organisations, conducting needs assessments on capacity and funding requirements, and developing multi-year agreements to provide sustained support. We strongly believe in the power of networks and movement building and the Partner Network team is central in identifying and supporting opportunities for lateral learning and knowledge exchanges among partners, identifying capacity-building needs and organisational strengthening and connecting the voices and experiences of partners to build a global community of practice that share an aligned vision of coastal fisheries reform that place communities at the centre of lasting solutions.
- We are currently recruiting a Partnership Coordinator to support the strategic development and expansion of our Partner Network from our hub in Kenya. Partnership Coordinators play a pivotal role in advancing the organisation's mission, expanding its influence and contributing to impact through effective relationship building with civil society and non-governmental organisations that work directly with coastal communities. This role involves contributing to the formulation and execution of partnership growth strategies, nurturing relationships, fostering collaboration and ensuring the success of partnership initiatives.
- Reporting to the Head of Partnerships East Africa, this is a full-time role based in Kenya with regular travel to work closely with partners, colleagues and communities.
- This job requires extensive travel, including to remote locations, which may be weather and tide dependent, and working across multiple time zones, therefore flexibility and adaptability will be key requirements to being successful in this role.
- The successful candidate will be a motivated, proactive and highly organised individual, with an excellent knowledge of the context of rural communities, small-scale fisheries, and experience with community-based conservation and development initiatives in Kenya.
- We are looking for an individual who is open to new ideas and embraces innovation, who can demonstrate experience of building and stewarding relationships for effective working partnerships for conservation and/or development. Assessment of applications will include candidates’ alignment with BV’s core values and mission to support human rights-based approaches to marine conservation and fisheries management.
- You will thrive in environments that are collegiate and ambitious, and be able to demonstrate experience of working independently and as part of a high functioning team to solve complex problems in challenging situations.
Education: Degree, Diploma
Employment Type: Full Time
