Learning Agenda Officer

Countries: Kenya, United States of America

Organization: Namati

Closing date: 13 Jul 2023

About The Position

As the global movement for grassroots justice grows, practitioners across different regions and political contexts face many common challenges– from strategies to navigate repression and deepen democracy, to figuring out how to measure impact. The Learning Agenda for Legal Empowerment is exploring the frontiers of the field, where collective inquiry can generate new solutions to our most pressing challenges.

Through the Learning Agenda, practitioners and researchers across Asia, Africa, and Latin America are focusing their efforts on a set of common questions, sharing “what works” with each other in real-time, and addressing knowledge gaps in the field. For example, practitioners across 16 countries are using participatory action research to understand how legal empowerment strategies can build community power, increase the participation of women and marginalized groups in decision-making, and advance changes to laws and institutions across a range of political contexts.

The Learning Officer will help power the Learning Agenda by organizing the various in-person and virtual learning activities that bring Namati teams and members of the Grassroots Justice Network together for collective and comparative learning, as well as supporting the documentation and synthesis of that emerging learning, developing new knowledge products and training opportunities, and ensuring this wealth of knowledge and experience is shared widely across a range of platforms.

This position is situated within Namati’s Global Programs team, which facilitates learning across Namati’s six program teams. The Officer will report to the Learning Agenda Specialist and will collaborate often with the Namati team that convenes the global Grassroots Justice Network.

The Officer’s primary areas of responsibility include:

Coordinate learning activities

• Organize workshops, webinars, roundtables, skills sessions, and other learning activities, including managing logistics like sending out invitations, preparing agenda and materials, and ensuring timely follow-up like sharing notes and recordings with participants


• Lead on implementation of learning arcs on particular sub-questions of the learning agenda, including conducting research, facilitating peer exchange, and distilling important insights to share with the wider Network


• Provide support to Namati’s Global Programs team as they facilitate cross-learning efforts between Namati’s six country teams, including documenting wins and developing knowledge products


• Offer logistical and technical support for virtual and in-person learning activities, including facilitating travel and on-the-ground support for in-person convenings

Support research and knowledge synthesis

• Provide research support to prepare materials for learning activities


• Capture learning and training takeaways in accessible and interactive formats


• Support (and in some cases lead) content development, design, and layout for publications and other multimedia content

Communication and dissemination of emerging learning

• Manage the learning agenda website and collaborate with the Global communications team to develop social media content


• Design and lead activities like webinars and public events to share learning from across the learning agenda with a wide range of audiences (including practitioners and donors)


• Lead on the development of multimedia products - from videos to presentations to formats we haven’t even thought of yet - to communicate evidence and findings from learning efforts to a wide range of practitioner audiences


• Oversee translation and adaptation of content to various languages

Monitoring and Reporting

• Manage ongoing implementation of monitoring and evaluation processes for the learning agenda initiative, including regularly reviewing and updating metrics, like member engagement in learning activities, or outputs generated.


• Assist the resource mobilization team with information requests related to their donor reporting and tracking activities, and assist with requests related to proposal development as needed.

Examples of what you might have tackled last week

• Organized and led our recent roundtable event on Democracy and Closing Civic Spaces - which brought together 20 participants across Namati program teams, learning agenda researchers, and members of the Grassroots Justice Network - providing on-site logistical support and helping participants connect with the material and each other.


• Synthesized notes from that roundtable and shared them back with participants.


• Interviewed a practitioner from an action research project in Malawi, as part of the production of a spotlight video to be featured on the learning agenda webpage.


• Coordinated with vendors and submitted invoices for simultaneous language interpretation for a virtual learning event for Network members across several continents.

About You

• Background in practitioner learning: You have 3-5 years of work experience in a research/learning-focused role in a non-profit, think tank, or applied research institution, with a particular emphasis on communicating research findings to a range of practitioner audiences. Bachelor’s degree or equivalent qualification (for example, JD or LLB) in a relevant field preferred.


• Skilled communicator for learning: You’re skilled at being able to distill and communicate various kinds of knowledge, information, and experience in accessible, practitioner-friendly formats.


• Collaborative: You greet everyone you encounter with a collaborative spirit, kindness, and empathy. You are known as a team player who brings an “all hands on deck” mindset to all projects.


• Growth-oriented: You’re always seeking to better yourself and your work, and you will push yourself to the peak of performance to help fulfill our mission. In service of that growth, you welcome and delight in feedback from supervisors, peers, and anyone else.

Nice to have

• Experience with participatory action research methods and practice.


• French or Spanish language fluency.


• Experience working across countries in the Global South.

Location

This position is open to candidates based in Kenya or the United States.

The successful candidate will be expected to occasionally work non-standard hours to accommodate the various time zones of Namati’s program teams.

Compensation

We base our compensation on the markets where our staff operate. We work to communicate transparently with candidates (including talking about compensation very early in the process). Throughout the hiring process, we will seek to understand your specific skills, experience, and abilities as they will fit into our team and our job levels. We will finalize pay and responsibilities based on the qualifications, experience, and country location of the person joining.

We also offer excellent benefits: while the exact terms vary somewhat based on location, they always include health coverage, generous paid time off, retirement or old-age plan contributions, sick leave, and parental leave— or compensation for the same. All staff also have access to funds for professional development opportunities.

To Apply

Please complete our online application form. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis and initial review will begin 13th July 2023.

No phone calls, please. Namati is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

About Namati

Since 2011, Namati has worked to build a movement of grassroots justice advocates worldwide. We’ve grown tremendously, from a small founding group of big-hearted change-makers to a global staff of 170+ people across 12 time zones in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The Grassroots Justice Network, which we co-founded and convene to this day, has grown from 30 people in one room to the world’s largest community of justice advocates. Today, our membership comes from 3,300 organizations across 175 countries.

We have supported local communities to take on thousands of justice issues, directly improving the lives of over 1.5 million people since our founding. Together with communities, partners, and Network members, we’ve envisioned and won, transformative changes like the Customary Land Rights and National Land Commission Acts of Sierra Leone, and the world’s first Legal Empowerment Fund.

How to apply

To Apply

Please complete our online application form(https://namati.org/who-we-are/work-with-us/#op-582949-learning-agenda-officer). Applications will be considered on a rolling basis and initial review will begin 13th July 2023.

No phone calls, please. Namati is an Equal Opportunity Employer.