SENIOR TECHNICAL ADVISOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND RESEARCH

CARE is an international NGO with local staff and community partners in more than 90 countries. We create local solutions to poverty and inequality and we seek dignity for everyone every day and during times of crisis. These solutions have a broad range, from clean water to access to education; from microfinance to ensuring that everyone has nutritious food; from agriculture and climate change to disaster response. CARE puts women and girls at the center of everything we do because they have proven to be the best hope for creating lasting change in the world. Our staff live where they work, which makes us effective at understanding the challenges they face. We’ve been doing this for over 70 years, since World War II. It started with the world’s first CARE Package® of food for the post-war hungry in Europe. Our work today is as important as ever, we believe that poverty and inequality are historic injustices that we can end within a generation, for good. If you share our core beliefs: poverty is an injustice; poverty is solvable; and together, we have the power to end it, join us, and fight with CARE.

CARE aims to make 75 million people more food and nutrition secure and exercise their rights to food and water by 2030. This is in line with our global strategy on the Right to Food, Water, and Nutrition: https://www.care-international.org/files/files/FWN%20impact%20area%20strategy%20summary.pdf To meet this goal, CARE’s focuses Beyond Productivity in our work with local and global food systems. We use the SuPER principles to guide our work. These hold that sustainable smallholder agriculture systems (from inputs to production to processing and marketing, as well as consumption) should be Sustainable, Productive and Profitable, Equitable, and Resilient. They should be designed to achieve multiple benefits at the same time: increasing production, productivity, and incomes in ways that are resilient to climate change, while contributing to women’s empowerment, improved nutrition, and a reduced environmental footprint, and without undermining the food and nutrition security of future generations.

The Knowledge Management and Learning unit of CARE USA’s Food and Water Systems team promotes a culture of learning and information sharing, identifying and scaling the good practices of CARE & others, and influencing policy and practice by diverse actors and decision-makers on food and nutrition security. This team of dynamic and proactive people builds connections around the CARE International network and is a strong asset to the FNS team, providing support to COs and CI, generating evidence of impact, seeking to influence change at scale, and telling CARE’s unique story.

Responsibilities:

1. Help turn data and analysis into knowledge products for diverse users (50%)

• Develop and maintain publications and learning strategy for the overall FWS team, linked to the CARE strategy, with a special focus on publications designed to reach technical audiences.
• Support analysis and aggregation of research findings on priority FWS and climate resilience themes across the CARE portfolio.
  * drive the creation of content packs and evidence around Farmer’s Field and Business Schools
• Support specific strategic projects in the FWS portfolio to meet their research and KM goals on the project level, and feed those project findings into global analysis and conversations.
• Support translation of evaluation and research findings into technical guidance materials, learning briefs, external communications, advocacy, fundraising etc.
• Support technical staff in development of materials and placement in professional circles (peer reviewed journals, technical blogs conferences, research reports etc.)
  *Focus specifically on areas that include gender, youth, and livelihoods, agriculture, and climate change resilience.
  *Recruit and manage interns that support research and content creation for the KML team.

2. Create external communications and foster external relationships (20%)

• Identify and manage relationships with communications forums and technical spaces–such as IDEAL, Agrilinks, and other key audiences–to broadly share CARE’s learning and evidence to technical audiences outside of CARE
• Use CARE’s evidence as the basis for publishing content that bridges across projects and sectors to highlight successful approaches and tools, and cutting-edge areas for research.
• Provide content to support media and advocacy engagement
• Function as an expert in various KM and comms spaces, such as USAID’s CLA community of practice.
• Present research findings at events including AEA, IDEAL Resilience Forum etc.
• Co-author CARE’s primary strategy documents in FWS and the external dissemination strategy for those documents

3. Support design of learning components in new proposals (25%)

• Help program design teams incorporate strong plans for CLA, learning, and adaptive management in major proposals.
  *Support content for proposal development
• Support development of research and learning agendas in new and ongoing FWS programs (RFSAs/FtF/Institutional donors) in line with SFTW outcome areas and to support CARE’s broader policy efforts. Draft boilerplate language on CARE’s CLA capacities, learning strategies, and specific technical areas (ie: climate and resilience, value chains, etc).

4. Other Duties as Assigned (5%)

Qualifications:

• Bachelors degree in a field related to food and nutrition security and climate resilience.
• Practical experience in programming and / or advocacy.
• Experience developing communications documents
• Excellent written and verbal communications skills
• Masters degree in a field related to food and nutrition security, agriculture and markets, and climate resilience.
• Languages: English and at least one other major language (French, Spanish, Arabic, or Portuguese).
• Experience publishing articles, blogs, and technical content desired
• Communications background and experience in external communications and evidence sharing.
• Strong demonstrated understanding in linking robust research and learning to practical action, from design through to dissemination and use.
• Experience turning technical documents and data into external communications for advocacy, fundraising and external representation.
• Experience supporting program design and implementation and in developing learning agendas for Country office programs.
• Able to engage professionally with donors and influential peers in the sector
• Ability to work across different actors, cultural contexts, technical areas and bridge silos within the organization and with external partners
• Strong demonstrated skill working with external partners and bringing several stakeholders together for a common goal
• Ability to work independently and across multiple portfolios and subject areas at the same time
• Strong writing skills
• Managing interns