Field Officer/Survey Associate

Position Overview

Educate! is seeking a driven, organized, and collaborative Field Officer with outstanding data collection, people management, and communication skills to support data collection and management of evaluation projects in its Kenya office. The Field Officer will be responsible for supervising data collection teams. He/she has direct contact with enumerators across multiple sites and is responsible to provide support to the enumerators as well as the Evaluation team to ensure that the field survey activities are implemented with efficiency. In ten years of operating in East Africa, one of Educate!’s differentiating factors has been our commitment to impact evaluation and learning, and we believe that continuing to invest in research & development is a key component of continued growth and innovation. As Field Officer, you’ll work closely with our Senior Evaluation Associates and Evaluation Specialists, as well as with our programs, design, and innovation teams, to implement our evaluation activities in Kenya.

The right person for this role will:

• Have at least 1 year of work experience and a bachelor’s degree in a field like economics, M&E, research methods, public policy or a social science.
• Be an ultra-organized and self-motivated planner, capable of keeping multiple balls in the air with limited supervision, and a collaborative team player who can build relationships with a diverse range of stakeholders and engage team members over whom you won’t have direct authority. 
• Be fluent in Microsoft Excel and any mobile data collection platform (e.g. surveyCTO, ODK etc.) and bring strong skills in research and large-scale data collection.

About Educate! 

Africa has the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population. By 2035, the continent is poised to contribute more people to the global workforce each year than the rest of the world combined. 

At Educate! we're obsessed with impact. We leverage iterative learning to build highly scalable youth employment solutions aimed at unlocking the potential of the world’s youngest continent. 

Educate! prepares youth in Africa learn, earn and thrive in today’s economy by: 

1) introducing an employment-focused school subject into secondary, and 

2) delivering livelihood bootcamps for out-of-school youth, with a focus on marginalized rural girls and young women.

To date, more than 250,000 youth have been meaningfully impacted across Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya, and along the way, Educate! has become the largest youth employment and skills provider in East Africa.

Educate! is a team of over 250 largely African staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We prioritize building an engaging, fulfilling and growth oriented work environment. 50% of our top 30 leaders have been with us for over 5 years, 10+ alumni have started their own organizations and 6 current or former team members were Acumen Fund East Africa fellows. 

We have been backed by top foundations such as Imaginable Futures, Big Bang Philanthropy,  #startsmall, Generation Unlimited, CIFF and Echidna Giving. Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize and a 2015 WISE Award, and has been highlighted by the World Bank’s S4YE's Impact Portfolio, an Al Jazeera documentary, BBC, The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies on scaling education, and the Gates Foundation as a Goalkeepers Accelerator. In 2022, we received a catalytic investment from philanthropist Mackenzie Scott to scale our systems change work.

Educate!'s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year. By 2025, we aim to scale our annual reach by 4x and measurably impact over 400,000 new youth. 

Performance Objectives 

Enumerator management

• Lead and manage teams of enumerators, providing guidance, support, and supervision to ensure the successful implementation of the data collection at hand.
• Maintain a database of enumerators, coordinating recruitment, documenting performance across multiple rounds of data collection and updating the database accordingly
• Manage large qualitative and quantitative data collection, including training and supervising teams of enumerators or Educate! staff

Field survey planning

• Work with Sr. Evaluation Associate and other team members to prepare various requisitions related to data collection and field team management
• Identify and assess potential risks associated with field data collection and enumerator management. Develop and implement risk mitigation strategies to minimize the impact on product evaluations.

Survey management

• Oversee and coordinate data collection activities in the field, ensuring that data is collected accurately, consistently, and in accordance with product evaluation requirements.
• Communicate regularly with the Evaluation team and leadership Provide updates on data collection progress, challenges, and achievements.
• Address challenges and unexpected issues that arise during data collection Implement effective solutions to ensure project goals are met.
• Uphold ethical standards in data collection

Support to Evaluation Associates 

• Support the development of survey tools e.g. Focus Group Discussion guides, structured questionnaires, Key Informant Interviews guides, Observation tools etc.
• Support survey programming on mobile data collection platforms e.g. surveyCTO, google forms, Open Data Kit (ODK)
• Support data quality assessment and preliminary analysis as necessary. This is an area that the Field Officer can grow into

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in economics, statistics, public policy, M&E, or other social science
• Minimum of 1-2 years work experience including internships and fellowships
• Experience working in a similar role is required. This may include experience in field operations, data collection, project management, or related areas.
• Ability to lead and manage a team of enumerators, provide guidance, and ensure the successful execution of field data collection
• Fluent in Excel, PowerPoint, mobile data collection tools e.g. ODK or surveyCTO
• Self-motivated, highly organized, and meticulous with a strong commitment to rigor. Capable of identifying and addressing challenges that may arise during data collection. Skilled in building and maintaining positive relationships with team members, stakeholders, and community members.
• Passionate about working with youth to promote entrepreneurship, adept at thriving in diverse, multicultural environments, proactive and well-organized to meet deadlines, confident, quick to adapt, and open to learning.
• Ability to adapt to changing circumstances and unforeseen challenges, with excellent interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills in both Swahili and English.
• Willing to travel frequently and/or for significant time periods within product operation sites in Kenya, with up to 25% of time spent outside of the main duty station
• Fits our Five Cultural Tenets (see What is Educate! About? below); Learn more about Educate!’s culture here.

Terms

• The position will be based in Nairobi with frequent travel within program implementation sites
• Compensation will be competitive and based on experience. 
• The position reports to the Evaluation Specialist.  
• Shortlisting and interviews will be on a rolling basis with a goal to fill the position as soon as possible.

What Is Educate! About?

We’re ambitious. Are you? Educate! is growing fast, so new opportunities are opening up and expanding all the time. We’re inspired by people with drive, and we love to help them reach their full potential. We expect everyone at Educate! to contribute above and beyond their job description, grow their skills, and advance their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey.

1. We Put Youth First - The youth we serve come first. Always. In everything. That means we wake up thinking of ways we can serve youth even better and get the highest impact out of every dollar that we spend. It means Educate! doesn’t own a single vehicle, because we’d rather take the bus if it means one more student can participate. It means making every decision as the future depends on it — because if we get our way, it does.
2. We Are Always Learning - When you work at Educate!, educating yourself is part of your job too. We encourage every employee to find the best book on management; share the latest article on graphic design; bring in your favorite college mentor, or meet the researcher pushing the edge of the field. We are always thirsty for knowledge and love to share.
3. We are One Team, Many Views - We say what we think while treating each other well. We believe that all people have the same inherent value and that diverse ideas and open dialogue fuel excellence. We constantly strive to create an environment where everyone can and does express themselves freely. We support and respect each other as people and colleagues. We act as one team: We prioritize the organization's mission and goals over team or individual goals.
4. We have the Startup Mindset - We will always keep innovating to grow our impact. We aspire to be game-changing. We never think “we have arrived” or “we’re done.” We question the status quo in our industry. We move fast and embrace change to move towards our long-term vision. We’re not afraid of failure. We interrogate anything that slows us down. 
5. We Exceed Expectations - We assume we can achieve the impossible because we already have, year after year. We want our staff to create your own challenges, ask the toughest questions, and dream scary big!

Every person at Educate! — from interns to the CEO — is evaluated by how they live up to these five cultural tenets. They are at the core of how we achieve our mission and why we work as well as we do. 

Educate is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all who interact in our community. In creating this environment, we encourage people from a variety of cultures, backgrounds and life experiences to join our diverse team. 

Child Safeguarding: Educate! is committed to child-safe/youth-safe recruitment, selection and screening our recruitment and selection procedures reflect our commitment to the safety and protection of children in our programs. The successful candidate will be required to provide a satisfactory Certificate of Good Conduct as a condition of employment. We reserve the right to decline to offer employment to an individual or terminate an employment contract with an employee that may pose a risk to children and youth.