Short-term research opportunity for young emerging evaluators

Background:

In 2021-2022, SAMEA collaborated with the Department of Planning Monitoring and Evaluation in a co-creative process to develop two new evaluation criteria that focus on issues related to just transition. The work started in 2021 as part of an evaluation hackathon that involved teams of people from different government departments and non-government sectors co-developing the criteria. One team focused on a criterion on Climate and Ecosystems Health while the other team focused on Transformative Equity.

In 2022, these criteria and guidelines for applying them were refined and tested with newly commissioned evaluations. During trainings, presentations and other discussions on the guidelines, it became clear that a supplementary toolkit would be helpful for evaluators and commissioners to be better able to apply the criteria to evaluations. There are certainly many resources in the existing literature. It requires dedicated time and capacity to compile.

Task:

As a first step in building this toolkit, three emerging evaluators are required to conduct a desktop document review and mapping of existing M&E frameworks, reports, databases, etc. that would support evaluations to examine issues of climate and ecosystems health and transformative equity. These sources would be collated into an annotated bibliography that lists each source and describes the content and relevance of the source, providing relevant links. Depending on what is discovered in the literature review, an indicator compendium could be developed as a second output.

Duration and compensation:

Each emerging evaluator would be contracted for 36 days (between March and May 2024), for a stipend of R1200/day

Requirements for EEs:

This short-term opportunity is for individuals who are under 35 years of age and who have less than 5 years of experience in monitoring and evaluation, and who are currently not employed in an M&E capacity. Experience in conducting literature/document reviews is necessary. Interest in issues of evaluation for promoting transformative equity and climate and ecosystems health is desirable. The work will be remote but with virtual engagements between the EEs and supervisor(s).

To apply:

Send your curriculum vita, a letter of motivation, and references to Stephan Paulsen at [email protected] by 26 February 2024; general queries regarding this opportunity can also be sent to Stephan at this email.