Position Overview

Educate! is seeking a driven, organized, and collaborative Evaluation Specialist to design and manage research and evaluation projects, and analyze and disseminate the results of our research. 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. Educate! has recently launched a Rapid Impact Assessment System, an ambitious attempt to embed rigorous quantitative evaluation into our program development process. As an Evaluation Specialist, you’ll be an integral member of the evaluation team overseeing this system.  You’ll work closely with our Director of Monitoring and Evaluation and Technical Evaluation Lead, as well as with our programs, design, and innovation teams, to implement our ambitious evaluation and learning strategy across three countries.

The right person for this role will have at least 5 years of work experience, have taken courses in statistics or econometrics, and have either a master’s degree or equivalent work experience in a field like M&E, research methods, or public policy. You’ll be passionate about generating and using evidence to inform programs and policy, and excited to use data to piece together a story. You’ll be an ultra-organized and self-motivated planner and project manager, 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. You’ll also be fluent in Microsoft Excel and STATA (or other data analysis software) and bring strong skills in research and evaluation design, quantitative and qualitative analysis, and writing.

About Educate!

What if there was a way to measurably change the trajectory of the lives of youth across Africa? Since its launch in 2009, Educate! has worked to do just this, delivering outsized impacts at scale and at disproportionately low cost, through a product-led approach to youth development. As a disruptive, not-for-profit, social enterprise, our team leverages an obsession with evidence and entrepreneurial drive to tackle one our planet's greatest challenges - unlocking the potential of its youngest continent.

Educate!’s core model combines training in key skills with access to practical experience starting a business and mentorship, a formula that has been validated by several independent evaluations. This model is distributed through products targeting two lead channels. First, Educate! works with governments to help reform education systems at scale through policy change, teacher behavior change and tech-enabled products targeting systems-level sustainability, while also working directly with select schools. Second, Educate! builds employment-focused bootcamps and business support services targeting out-of-school youth left out of the education system. To date, more than 200,000 youth have been meaningfully impacted by this model across Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya and along the way Educate! has become the largest youth skills provider in East Africa.

Educate! is a team of over 160 largely African staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We have been backed by top foundations and product leaders such as Imaginable Futures, Big Bang Philanthropy, Echoing Green, the 1st Google Employee’s foundation, the head of Google Search and Rippleworks Foundation. Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize and a 2015 WISE Award, and has been highlighted by Bill Gates, in the World Bank’s S4YE's Impact Portfolio, an Al Jazeera documentary, BBC, and The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies in their global scaling education learning initiative. Educate! was also selected by the UN’s Generation Unlimited as 1 of 20 innovative youth solutions and by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as a Goalkeepers Accelerator.

Educate!'s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year.

Performance Objectives

Research and Evaluation Design

• Support design of evaluation and research projects to answer pressing program and policy questions, working closely with our product teams to ensure that evaluation and research projects meet the needs of the intended user
• Ensure selection of best evaluation methodology (qualitative and quantitative) to answer learning objectives of each evaluation
• Support measurement and tool design to ensure evaluation and research measures target outcomes including teacher pedagogy adoption and quality, student-level soft and hard skills, and economic and life outcomes.
• Ensure research adheres to best practices for delivering high quality, fit-for-purpose research

Research and Evaluation Management

• Plan and manage research and evaluation projects, including evaluations run internally and with external consultants.
• Manage testing of measurement tools for reliability and validity
• Ensure that research and evaluation projects are well-planned and coordinated with other team priorities, and that projects proceed on time with course corrections as needed
• Collaborate with evaluation team to ensure all research and evaluation projects adhere to best practices for delivering high quality, fit-for-purpose research
• Manage large and small data collection, including hiring, training, and supervising teams of enumerators for qualitative and quantitative evaluations
• Ensure data collected is high quality, minimizing errors, following best practices in research ethics, and providing reliable measurement of key outcomes
• Collaborate with Performance Metrics and Product teams programs to integrate monitoring data into evaluations

Analysis and Interpretation

• Clean and prepare survey data for analysis
• Conduct quantitative data analysis, including summarizing descriptive statistics of Educate!’s primary outcomes of interest
• Conduct statistical analysis of rapid impact assessment data using a variety of identification strategies to estimate the impact of Educate!’s programs on primary outcomes of interest (youth skills, economic activity, savings and income)
• Write well-documented, reproducible analysis code for data cleaning, descriptive statistics, regression analysis, and any other analysis required
• Conduct qualitative research and analysis as needed, tailoring the analysis approach and methodology to the evaluation objectives
• Summarize and interpret data to create clear, actionable recommendations for product teams, using the data to piece together an evidence-based narrative about how youth experience Educate!’s programs

Evidence Use and Results Dissemination

• Summarize research findings to facilitate action by internal and external stakeholders, including Educate!'s Product and Program Implementation teams, as well as government partners and funders
• Advise product strategy teams to incorporate learnings from each evaluation into product strategy and learning agenda and organization-wide theory of change
• Stay up to date with literature on youth skill development, sharing evidence with product teams and understanding where Educate! fits into the landscape
• Support Director of M&E and Technical Evaluation Lead to position Educate! as a thought leader in youth skills programming, evidence generation, and measurement

Qualifications

• Master's degree in economics, education, or other social science with coursework in econometrics, quantitative and qualitative research methods PLUS
• 5+ years of professional experience (in addition to education) in conducting research analysis, conducting research, analyzing data, and working with large datasets
• Experience working with large data sets and on impact evaluations, especially randomized evaluations.
• Experience with evaluations of education, skills, or labor market interventions, is highly preferred.
• Experience developing and testing skills measurement tools.
• Strong research and analytical skills, including ability to quickly digest and analyze a diverse range of information and data collected from varied sources
• High proficiency in STATA or alternative statistical software
• Excellent at summarizing complex research for a policy or practitioner audience, proficient in Excel, PowerPoint, data visualization software (Tableau, etc.)
• Self-starter, well-organized and, diligent with great attention to detail and passion for extracting as much information as possible out of a dataset while maintaining a commitment to rigor
• Collaborative team player
• Excellent interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills
• Willing to travel frequently and/or for significant time periods within East Africa (the role can be based in, Kigali, Nairobi or Kampala, with up to 25% - 50% of time spent outside of the main duty station)
• Fits our Five Cultural Tenets (see What is Educate! About? below); Learn more about Educate! culture here

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 like 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 Only Solve a Problem Once - We are allergic to band-aids so we love the person who brings the new system to solve the problem for good, even problems we haven’t recognized yet.
4. We Are Flexible - We thrive on change — we’re driving it. We are growing every day, so we have to adapt quickly to meet new challenges, and our team keeps up.
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 executive director — 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.