Job Title: Human-Centered Design and Community Engagement Supervisor

Sector: Education

Employment Category: Fixed Term

Employment Type: Full-Time

Open to Expatriates: No

Location: Kasulu, Tanzania

Background/IRC Summary:

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC offers lifesaving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from war or disaster. At work today in over 40 countries and 28 U.S. cities, we restore safety, dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted and struggling to endure. The IRC leads the way from harm to home.

Project Background

PlayMatters (2020-2025) is an education initiative funded through a $100 million grant from the LEGO Foundation. The program reimagines childhood for 800,000+ refugee and host-community children across Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda children whose education and social development has been affected by displacement and trauma. Building on children’s amazing resilience and a growing evidence base supporting Learning through Play methodologies, PlayMatters cultivates holistic learning for children ages 3-12+. PlayMatters is led by the International Rescue Committee and includes Plan International, War Child Holland, Innovations for Poverty Action, the Behavioral Insights Team in partnership with the LEGO Foundation. 

Position Summary

The IRC is seeking a Human Centered Design and Community Engagement Supervisor to join our content and piloting teams in Tanzania.

• The Human Centered Design and Community Engagement Supervisor will use design research methods to understand opportunities and test solutions for play-based learning in refugee and host community contexts in Tanzania.
• The Human Centered Design and Community Engagement Supervisor will consult with PlayMatters subject-matter experts (education, parenting, gender, wellbeing, and others) to interpret results from early intervention testing, behavioral research, and other formative research and collaboratively identify solutions.
• The Human Centered Design and Community Engagement Supervisor will collaborate with our content and pilot teams to populate the content into solutions and strategize on how the content can be delivered.
• For solutions that may need to be tested for contextualization, the Human Centered Design and Community Engagement Supervisor will work with our teams to lead the testing process, including developing testing plans (testing workplan, learning questions, interview guides, etc.) and, collaboratively with our piloting teams, testing content with users.
• The solutions developed will create and strengthen learning through play opportunities for the lives of children aged 3-12+ in the spaces in which they live and learn. 

Major Responsibilities:

The Human Centered Design and Community Engagement Supervisor will be an integral part of our team and will work collaboratively with PlayMatters content development, technical, and pilotingteams.

Design research and community engagement

• Workshop facilitation and design: The Human Centered Design and Community Engagement Supervisor will work closely with the PlayMatters content development and content testing teams to co-lead co-design workshops with key stakeholders (remote and/or in person). They will synthesize insights from interviews and design workshops with the team to identify actions for the next iteration of content.
• Prototype Creation: The Human Centered Design and Community Engagement Supervisor is responsible for connecting the dots between user research, evidence, and expert direction from the team, to generate testable prototypes. Examples of prototypes include low-fidelity printouts/illustrations, clickable mockups, sample messages, high fidelity mock-ups of service experience, user journeys, and illustrations to test for understanding.
• Prototype testing: The Human Centered Design and Community Engagement Supervisor will work with the team to test prototypes with key stakeholders (remote and/or in person where possible).
• Content adaptation: Human Centered Design and Community Engagement Supervisor will work with the product designers to adapt content with the team. He/she will work with content development teams to test/contextualize the community draft interventions (as needed) and identify areas for refinement in draft interventions, based on test results from small-scale piloting, prototyping, and contextual testing.
• Pilot design research:  The Human Centered Design and Community Engagement Supervisor will work with the monitoring and evaluation team to draft interview questions to be answered during the piloting phase. They will work with the team to co-manage the testing process and adapt the final assets and guides after the pilots based on feedback from the research conducted by the M&E/project team.  
• Community Engagement: The Human Centered Design and Community Engagement Supervisor will work with caregivers, educators, community leaders, ward, and district officials both in the refugee camps and host community to promote engagement on learning through play activities to ensure sprinting and piloting activities are well caried out.  Ensure that PlayMatters project Sprinting and Piloting activities contributes to and complies with best practice, including IRC’s compliance, data management and safeguarding policies.
• Deliverables before testing stages (pilot, implementation study, RCT, etc):
• Design of solution: The Human Centered Design and Community Engagement Supervisor will deliver the recommended design of the solution and its components, the evidence to support the recommendation, and an implementation plan to carry out the solution.
• Design of assets: The Human Centered Design and Community Engagement supervisor will be responsible for the production of final assets (visuals, relevant materials) that are part of the recommended solution.

Qualifications

• Qualitative research/human-centered design research skills of 3-5 years.
• Experience with community-to-program interactions, engagement, and collaboration.
• Preferred experience creating educational content, educational services, or educational programs.
• Preferred experience working with pre-literate adults, young children, refugee populations, and vulnerable populations.
• Experience leading co-design workshops (in-person or virtually) is a plus.

Demonstrated Skills and Competencies:

• Qualitative research
• Community engagement
• Collaboration
• Prototyping is a plus

Language Skills:

• Swahili and local language skills relevant to the refugee context in Tanzania is a major plus.
• English (fluent)

Preferred experience & skills:

• Ability to work collaboratively with content teams to refine and build out the following interventions based on the testing results that have already been obtained.
• Ability to lead and manage teams to test content to ensure content is relevant for all users in all PlayMatters contexts.
• Work with the PlayMatters graphic designer and content teams to ensure content is designed so that it is responsive to user needs.
• Experience in qualitative data collection
• Excellent verbal, written and visual communication skills as well as, an overall ability to be clear and concise in all communications.
• Strong organizational and time-management skills; proven ability to prioritize and deliver on time.
• Strong problem-solving skills
• Ability to work both independently and in a dynamic, cross-functional global team structure.

Working Environment:

• Mix of remote and in person work. Applicants must have a home or alternate workspace they can effectively complete their work from during regularly scheduled work hours

• The IRC and IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in IRC Way - Standards for Professional Conduct.  These are Integrity, Service, and Accountability.  In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Beneficiary Protection from Exploitation and Abuse, Child Safeguarding, Anti Workplace Harassment, Fiscal Integrity, and Anti-Retaliation.