Research, Monitoring & Evaluation Officer -Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

Organization Profile:

Room to Read is a global organization transforming the lives of millions of children in low-income countries by focusing on literacy and gender equality in education. Founded in 2000 on the belief that World Change Starts with Educated Children®, our innovative model focuses on deep, systemic transformation within schools in low-income countries during two time periods which are most critical in a child’s schooling: early primary school for literacy acquisition and secondary school for girls’ education. We work in collaboration with local communities, partner organizations and governments to develop literacy skills and a habit of reading among primary school children and ensure girls can complete secondary school with the skills necessary to negotiate key life decisions. By focusing on the quality of education provided within the communities and ensuring these outcomes are measured, we have created a model that can be replicated, localized and sustained by governments. Room to Read has benefited 10 million children across 17,000 communities in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Laos, Nepal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Vietnam and Zambia, and aims to reach 15 million children by 2020.

Position Overview:

The Research, Monitoring & Evaluation (RM&E) Officer’s primary responsibilities will include providing technical expertise and working with program and operations team to design, implement and manage our research, monitoring and evaluation systems. The position will report directly to the Country Director and will have regular interactions with all country staff. This position will be based in the Country Office located in Dar es Salaam but will require frequent travel to all areas where Room to Read operates. 

Duties & Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with Program and Operations department colleagues to effectively design, implement and oversee country office research, monitoring and evaluation activities.
• Develop, manage, and implement COTZ's annual in-country research agenda, collaborating with programs and operations colleagues to help them identify and prioritize areas for targeted learning, and contributing technical research design and methodology expertise.
• Provide technical expertise to support the design and implementation of monitoring activities, and work with operations managers to ensure the timely entry of global indicators, program implementation monitoring, and donor reporting data
• Manage and coordinate the implementation of rigorous reading skills impact assessments, including training and mentoring contract staff to help them develop the necessary knowledge and skill sets to run methodologically strong evaluations that adhere to global RM&E evaluation guidelines.
• Support RtR’s growing outcome-monitoring initiatives, ensuring that staff have the necessary skills to collect outcome data in a high-quality and methodologically-sound manner, and facilitating in-country piloting of new outcome measures, if applicable. 
• Synthesize and analyze in-country research, global indicator, program implementation monitoring, outcome-monitoring, and reading skills evaluation data and prepare timely presentations and summary reports of key findings by program or operational activity.  Support additional country-level data analysis as requested by the Country Director or Global Office. 
• Facilitate timely CO-wide reflection on RM&E findings with relevant program and operational team members.  This will include reflecting on findings of in-country research studies, quarterly and annual global indicator data, program implementation monitoring data such as the twice-annual Library Rating System, and immediate dissemination of reading skills evaluation results.
• Work with Program Managers, Directors and the Country Director to identify program and operational improvements rooted in the data to more efficiently and effectively manage each program.  Regularly update and reflect with the Country Management Team on new RM&E findings and the status of agreed-upon data-driven action items.
• Lead the development and management of budgets for research, evaluation, and RM&E staff support; provide input on monitoring activity budgets.
• Manage and coordinate data quality monitoring activities in accordance with global guidelines, using the learnings to build country office team capacity on consistent understanding of organizational indicators and application of quality data collection practices.  
• Train and mentor country office staff to understand Room to Read's RM&E system, the importance of its objectivity and rigor, and their individual roles in ensuring it is implemented effectively and used to improve program design and implementation. 
• Travel regularly throughout the year to oversee the implementation of RM&E work, maintain an understanding of the current stage of development of RM&E practice in the organization, and identify where and how RM&E practice requires improvement and investment.
• Ensure CO RM&E practices are in or move towards alignment with global RM&E guidelines and work with GO RM&E to agree on areas where country-level contextualization is appropriate
• Serve as the country office's GSD Power User, which includes providing overall maintenance of the Global Solutions Database, training new country staff on how to use GSD for their roles, conducting refresher trainings on key GSD activities and updated functionalities, and troubleshooting GSD problems with staff.
• Serve as primary country contact for any research or evaluation assignments run by external consultants, and provide guidance on methodology and support on logistical arrangements for these studies.
• Serve as point of contact for GO communications team to collect case studies and stories for sharing anecdotal evidence of RtR's impact.
• Stay informed about research and trends in the area of research, monitoring and evaluation and recommend improvements to our systems accordingly.

Qualifications:

Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in a related field, i.e. education, research, social sciences / economics.
• Proven previous experience in research, monitoring and evaluation.
• Strong technical competence in research and monitoring and evaluation methods.
• Strong operational management ability: a clear focus on results – sets goals, plans and prioritizes effectively, monitors quality and progress of work against plans.
• Strong analytical skills.
• Strong quantitative and qualitative analysis skills, with proven ability to work with data software packages such as SPSS/SAS.
• Experience in data entry and analysis.
• Ability to travel frequently to where RtR Tanzania operates, including rural areas.
• Prior experience living and/or working in rural areas.
• Good knowledge and understanding of education issues, including community involvement in schools.
• Experience in successful implementation of a wide range of tasks.
• Commitment to continuous learning for professional development.
• Demonstrated ability to pull multi-cultural environment and establish harmonious relationships both within and outside the organization.
• Oral and written fluency in Swahili and English

Preferred:

• Excellent knowledge, understanding and experience of operation research and leading country monitoring and evaluation strategy
• Effectiveness in working or volunteering in a fast-paced, growth-oriented global or regional non-governmental organization that is focused on maintaining high quality work and low overhead 

To be successful as a member of the Room to Read team, you will also:

• Have passion for our mission and a strong desire to impact a dynamic nonprofit organization
• Be an innovative and creative thinker that tries new things and inspires others to do so
• Have a very high level of personal and professional integrity and trustworthiness
• Have a strong work ethic and require minimal direction
• Work well independently as well as part of a team
• Thrive in a fast-paced and fun environment

Compensation:

Room to Read offers a competitive salary with excellent benefits; benefits including 13^thmonth bonus, provident fund, health and accidental insurances for staff and their family; leaves and staff professional development. The non-monetary compensation includes a unique opportunity to be part of an innovative, meaningful, fun, and rapidly growing organization that is changing, transforming the lives of millions of children in developing countries by focusing on literacy and gender equality in education.

Application Procedure:

Please send a cover letter and resume by email, with RME Officer in the subject line, totz.info@roomtoread.org or send by post to Associate Director Africa, Room to Read Tanzania, Post Box 105459, Ileje Street, Mikocheni B, Plot No 36, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. If you do not hear from Room to Read within one month of the closing date, please accept that your application was unsuccessful. Please note that late applications will not be considered and correspondence will be limited to short-listed candidates only. 

Room to Read is proud to be an equal opportunity employer committed to identifying and developing the skills and leadership of people from diverse backgrounds.