Research and Learning Manager at FilmAid

General Position Summary:

The Research and Learning Manager is tasked to deliver research, monitoring and evaluation of FilmAid’s programs on multiple donor funded communications projects in Kenya specifically for Dadaab and Kakuma humanitarian and development operations. The position also requires exemplary research, analytical & interpersonal communication skills to be used in communicating impact and promoting learning within the organization and externally with donors, government and other key stakeholders.

Essential Functions:

• Direct responsibility and accountability for planning management and oversight of CwC outreach, livelihood and media arts programmes and projects and any other research, monitoring and evaluations relating to the Kenya Country office;
• Establishes mechanisms to assure all mandatory M&E requirements are met, the intended results are produced;
• Provides evaluation feedback into policy/project/programme design, including comments on various documents and regularly monitors risk logs of projects;
• Follows up on implementation of evaluation recommendations; ensuring the optimal use of evaluations by providing guidance in preparation of timely management response to all mandatory evaluations and by developing a communication plan;
• Provides support to the Senior Management on the programme of work, including identification of topics, and projects/programme to be evaluated;
• Provides support to internal teams and stakeholders on ways and means to improve M&E related components and activities;
• Provides support at the design stage of programmes/projects for setting up a framework with defined indicators to facilitate the evaluation at the later stages;
• Leadership and coordination of evaluation missions for projects, sectoral and thematic evaluations, including desk evaluations/studies on selected sectors/themes;
• Supports the development of project proposals – particularly performance monitoring plans and M&E sections;
• Develop standards for measuring quality of activities implemented;
• Lead in the assessing the quality of programmes on a routine basis;
• Communicate challenges, lessons learned, opportunities and best practice resulting from quality assurance activities;
• Ensures timely submission of good quality M&E report, including any other reports requiring M&E inputs. The reports should enlighten, inspire and record compliance for internal and external use, and contain data of sufficient quality to be valid for evaluation;
• In collaboration with HQ support in the preparation of organizations annual reports;
• Contribute to global research and learning on Communicating with Communities (CwC) methodologies;
• Manage programmatic learning structures to ensure that best practices and challenges are incorporated into continued activities.
• Supervisory responsibility
• All project team members.
• Works directly with: Senor Management Team (SMT: Country Director, Creative and Content Director, Operations Director) Management team (MT: Executive Coordinator, Programme Coordinator, Finance Manager, Creative and Content Manager, Field/Site Managers). Supervise all program team members in the Kenya operation by articulating expectations, displaying model behavior, maintaining open lines of communication and being clear about roles and relationships. Work directly with Senior Management Team to design, monitor and report program performance objectives.

Qualifications and Requirements:

• A degree or equivalent in Media for Development or related field with certificate/diploma in Programme Monitoring and Evaluation;
• At least 4 years experience operational M&E experience at the national and international level in development and humanitarian issues;
• Expertise and familiarity with cutting-edge M&E methods, designing results frameworks and evaluating development results, including experience in practical implementation of impact evaluations, experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations, particularly in public and private enterprises;
• Demonstrated experience in applying qualitative/participatory research methods; linking planning to M&E; results based approaches;
• Experience in the usage of computers and office software packages, experience in handling of web based management systems; proficiency in using statistical analysis software, such as SPSS and Excel); qualitative data analysis software (such as QSR) will be an asset;
• Experienced in rendering M&E results with Social Behavior Change Communication approaches;
• Experience with principles and practice of humanitarian aid and/or development.
• Has lived and is willing to live and work in non-family workstations.

Key Skills and Competencies:

• Fluency in written and spoken English and Kiswahili is essential.
• Excellent writing skills.
• Excellent interpersonal, communication and organizational skills.
• Creative and analytical thinker with the ability to manage multiple projects.
• Must be highly organized and able to work with other teams.