Type: Engineering, Technology Development
Role: Aspire Fellow (Mechanical Design Engineer, Industrial/Process Engineer, Full Stack Developer, Database Manager)
Venture: Aspire Food Group Ghana
Location: Kumasi and Accra, Ghana
Deadline: July 14, 2019
About Aspire Food Group
Aspire Food Group is a social enterprise dedicated to the sustainable practice of farming edible insects. In Ghana, Aspire seeks to farm locally desired insects as a way to address food insecurity and malnutrition. Aspire farms the palm weevil larva, a local delicacy that has been traditionally hand-harvested from palm trees. In addition, Aspire has trained several hundred farmers in Southern and Central Ghana to farm their own larva as a source of household animal protein and as an opportunity for increased income.
In partnership with Aspire, as a Fellow with Engineers Without Borders Canada , you will be placed with Aspire Food Group to work with their team in Ghana. Throughout your Fellowship with EWB, you will receive guidance, mentorship and financial support from the community in Canada and in East and West Africa.
About Engineers Without Borders Canada (EWB)
EWB is a free-thinking charitable organization that brings people and ideas together to tackle the most crucial causes of poverty and inequality. We nurture talent and leadership, enable social entrepreneurship and advocate for policy innovations to cross-breed systems-changing innovations to ensure economic and public opportunity reaches everyone, including the most underserved and marginalized populations, especially women and girls.
Through our leadership curriculum and Fellowships Program, we offer experiential learning opportunities in Canada and sub-Saharan Africa to launch future shapers equipped to understand and re-engineer complex social systems. For more information, visit ewb.ca.
About You
Aspire Food Group is looking for detail-oriented, innovative and flexible professionals to support the organization in improving operational efficiency and contribute to reduced production costs and improved yields.
We are currently seeking fellows who are resourceful with experience in the following fields:
- Mechanical Engineering with a focus on product design. Working knowledge of HVAC design and thermodynamics is a strong asset;
- Industrial or Process Engineering with a focus on process design, automation, six sigma and lean manufacturing;
- Full Stack Developer with a focus on developing tools for data collection, analysis, management and presentation.
The Aspire fellow’s responsibilities will include:
- Working in a multidisciplinary environment to develop innovative solutions towards scaling up the production and expansion into a larger facility;
- Getting a thorough understanding of systems and processes used to farm, store and process feed/insects (working across teams and with various stakeholders);
- Supporting the overall operations and the development of an efficient and sustainable industrial farming process;
- Working closely with the entomology team to develop an understanding of the insects biological characteristics and environmental interactions to develop solutions which support a productive output throughout the lifecycle of the insect;
- Effectively communicating recommendations to technical and non-technical audiences
- Executing cost-based analyses to support recommended interventions;
- Leading the prototyping of potential solutions;
- Identifying resources, suppliers and pathways to implement successful prototypes farm-wide and on an industrial scale;
- Supporting procurement to execute and implement solutions given local infrastructure.
Required Skills & Qualifications
- Minimum Bachelor’s degree in the relevant fields listed above;
- Professional experience or completed co-op terms in the relevant fields;
- Excellent analytical and problem solving skills;
- High level of adaptability and flexibility;
- Willingness to work outside of traditional responsibilities;
- Strong ability to work independently and with minimal supervision;
- Superb communication skills;
- Excellent time management skills;
- Detail-oriented;
- Hard working and passionate about social change;
- Awareness of cross-cultural communication and ability to maintain constructive relationships with a diverse set of key stakeholders.
Desirable
- Knowledge of Gender Lens Investing. Experience in GLI is an asset;
- Background in gender inclusion, diversity and mainstreaming.
Application Inquiries
- For inquiries about the EWB Fellowship experience, please contact: fellowrecruitment@ewb.ca
- For inquiries about the role with Aspire, please contact: Shobhita Soor
Application Instructions
For further details, please refer to our website.
