Consultants and Technical Specialists, YouthMap

The International Youth Foundation (IYF) invests in the extraordinary potential of young people. Founded in 1990, IYF builds and maintains a worldwide community of businesses, governments, and civil society organizations committed to empowering youth to be healthy, productive, and engaged citizens. IYF programs are catalysts of change that help young people obtain a quality education, gain employability skills, make healthy choices, and improve their communities. To learn more please visit www.iyfnet.org.

IYF is seeking consultants and technical specialists to support a series of multi-sector youth assessments in Sub-Saharan Africa. Assessments will be designed to provide holistic information on the conditions of young people and the status of youth-serving infrastructure in the selected countries.

Consultants and technical specialists will participate in one or more assessment teams, conducting cross-sector field research, using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, in areas including education, livelihoods, economic growth, agriculture, health, democracy and governance, technology, and local institutional capacity. Consultants and technical specialists will support the design and adaptation of assessment instruments appropriate to the selected country context, development of analytic approaches, and data collection and analysis. Working with assessment team members, consultants and technical specialists will prepare youth assessment country reports. Reports will provide concise summations of current literature on youth development in the country and findings from assessment research in the field.

DELIVERABLES:

Support design and adaptation of youth assessment instruments and development of analytic approaches for youth assessment(s) in one or more countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Through field research, collect primary data on youth development using qualitative and quantitative instruments administered to youth, youth-service providers, the private sector, the public sector, and local communities. Conduct rapid surveys to collect demographic and substantive information that can be generalized across a given country context. Conduct interviews, focus groups, and community mapping exercises to capture youth and stakeholder perspectives and local knowledge of assets and needs.
Compile and analyze secondary data on a core set of youth indicators (e.g., education, economic growth, democracy/governance, agriculture, health), disaggregated by geography, gender, ethnicity, race, and other variables. Compile and analyze information and evaluations on current and past USAID-funded youth development programs as well as other donor-funded and public sector youth development programs.
Working with the program team, analyze quantitative and qualitative data collected and contribute to drafts and produce final versions of youth assessment country reports.
Train local enumerators / field data collection teams (including youth) on the accurate use of data collection instruments.
Support the program team in analyzing and documenting good practices, lessons learned, trends, and cross-cutting policy and implementation issues.

QUALIFICATIONS:

Master’s Degree in Economics, Statistics, Public Policy, Education, Social Sciences or a related field.
Minimum 8 years experience working in the international development, preferably youth development, or related fields.
Experience working with USAID-funded programs preferred.
Proven experience in survey design and field research, qualitative research methodologies, statistics, data analysis. Knowledge of SPSS and other data analysis software, such as Atlas.ti/NVivo, strongly preferred.
Excellent writing skills required. Fluency in English, oral and written, required. Knowledge of French and/or Portuguese required for some country assessments.
Experience in Sub-Saharan Africa strongly preferred. Knowledge of / experience with programs that support youth employment and/or social services (e.g. education, health) preferred.
Ability to travel internationally for up to 5 weeks at a time.

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS:

Please send the following documents to jobs@iyfnet.org with “CONSULTANTS” in the subject box: