Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is an international non-governmental organization supporting relief and development work in over 99 countries around the world. CRS programs assist persons on the basis of need, regardless of creed, ethnicity or nationality and works through local church and non-church partners to implement its programs

Job Summary

As the Knowledge Management and Learning (KML) Lead for the Kenya Country Program (CP), you will provide KML related technical guidance and advice to staff and implementing partners in line with CRS program quality principles, standards, policies and procedures, donor requirements, and industry best practices, to advance the delivery of adaptive programming to the poor and vulnerable. You will lead the development and implementation of a holistic learning and knowledge management strategy for creation, capture, access, application and sharing of knowledge across the Kenya Country Program. You will collaborate to develop and disseminate audience-specific learning and communication products. You will play a significant role in establishing and nurturing a culture of learning to strengthen the CP evidence base, responsiveness, and adaptive project management to contribute to the agency KML agenda. Your coordination and relationship management skills will ensure that CRS Kenya applies best practices in KML, and constantly works towards improving the impact of its benefits to the people we serve.

Roles and Key Responsibilities

• Lead the development and implementation of the CP KML strategy and framework for creation, capture, access, application and sharing of knowledge across the Kenya CP.
• Lead/support implementation of all KML activities as outlined in the CP KML strategy and project Detailed Implementation Plans (DIPs), in line with CRS program quality principles, standards, policies and procedures, donor requirements, and industry good practices.
• Develop clear guidance and support project teams to integrate KML into project design and implementation.
• Work with the ICT and Communications team to establish and manage CRS Kenya digital knowledge management library for project design documents, progress reports, evaluation reports, research and learning products, and calendar of reflection and learning events.
• Support the development of performance data analytics, dashboards, and infographics to visualize project monitoring, evaluation, research and learning findings across the CP.
• Lead the production of knowledge management and learning products and tools, working directly with the technical leads to develop learning agendas, concepts, or lessons learned into products such as manuals, guidelines, toolkits, learning briefs and publications.
• Contribute to data collection, analysis, synthesis, visualization, and dissemination of audience-specific learning products to CRS staff (national, regional and HQ), partner staff, government staff, community members, other NGOs, and stakeholders.
• Collaborate with communications unit to develop strategies for dissemination of learning and communication products, ensuring that the right audiences are gaining access to the materials through identified/ approved channels and platforms, both locally and internationally.
• Create and strengthen utilization of collaborative tools to facilitate sharing of ideas that are of use to colleagues, project teams, and other partners.
• Organize internal and external reflection sessions (after-action reviews, learning to action discussions, quarterly reflection sessions, roundtables, and seminars), to ensure promising practices, success/failure factors, lessons learned, and recommendations are identified, documented, disseminated, and used for adaptive project management.
• Promote the application of learning in decision making to improve program quality and to strengthen agency influence among external stakeholders.
• Review the KML Technical Working Group Terms of Reference and ensure its functionality in completing and documenting KML tasks.
• Lead KML-related technical assistance and capacity strengthening for staff and partners to utilize CRS knowledge management and communication platforms, such as MyCRS (intranet), Salesforce (Gateway), SharePoint, MS Teams, Yammer, One Drive, other Office 365 applications.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities 

• Analysis and problem-solving skills with ability to make sound judgment.
• Good relationship management skills and the ability to work collaboratively in a varied cultural and institutional context.
• Proactive, results-oriented, and service-oriented.
• Attention to details, accuracy, and timeliness in executing assigned responsibilities.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills.
• Demonstrated commitment to respect, equity, diversity and inclusion including gender equality

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in Gender Integration in MEAL and Proposal Development will be an added advantage.
• Familiarity with USAID Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) framework will be an added advantage.
• Strong conceptual knowledge of theories of change and logical frameworks.
• Experience working with partners, participatory action planning and community engagement.

Required Languages

Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English, with demonstrated technical writing skills for publication.

Travel: Must be willing and able to travel up to 50%.

Key Working Relationships 

Internal: Senior Project Officer Accountability and Learning, Project MEAL Officers and Managers, Project Managers, Sector Leads, Head of Programs, Business Development Manager, Communications Manager, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Manager and Officers, Regional Technical Advisors MEAL, and ICT, KML team (HQ).

External: Local Implementing Partners (LIP) and Consortium Partner staff, Peer agencies’ staff, Donors, Community members.

QUALIFICATIONS

Basic Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Information Systems, Knowledge Management, Data Management, Organization Development, International Development, Demography, Social sciences, Monitoring and Evaluation, or other KML related field is required. Additional experience may substitute for some education- Bachelor’s degree with additional experience in similar role may be acceptable.
• Minimum of four years’ NGO experience in designing and managing knowledge management and learning systems for country programs or moderately complex projects, funded by different public donors, including USAID.
• Experience setting up and managing digital knowledge management platforms.
• Demonstrated ability to turn complex concepts, ideas, and knowledge into simple, easy-to-digest communication and learning products for varied audiences.
• Demonstrated experience in facilitating groups, meetings, and events (both online and in-person), resulting in collaborative decision-making with agreed-upon action items/priorities.
• Strong ICT skills including MS Windows and MS Office packages (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Access, Teams), web conferencing applications, information management systems, SharePoint, data collection (Commcare, ODK, KoboCollect), data analysis (SPSS, STATA) and data visualization (PowerBI, Tableau) applications, and collaboration platforms (Miro, Mural).