The last post updated you on a lot of the happenings here on this team…and not too much has changed! Janine is working for Aerie on the international team, which is personally sad for me because I love working with Janine, but it makes a lot of sense for our organization and even the Research Team. Through much of 2011, she will be able to work directly with Aerie and Lindsay Cope (all in the same country) to further refine our Healthcare Program this year.
It makes sense for the Research Team because I can get back into some of the details of our M&E system. To that end, I will be managing the Evaluation that will be occurring this spring in Kuria. This will be tough task, but an exciting one. As I mentioned in a previous post or two, the most urgent aspect of this work is finding a couple of third-party evaluators to implement the MPAT. Our search to this end has begun.
I spoke to one great candidate from Ohio State early this week, and a professor there has connected me with a few other people from my local academic community. I am only sad that I haven’t tapped into this huge community any earlier! I am optimistic that these connections will yield some great collaboration in the future.
As I write, I realize I should be a little more explicit about what kind of person we are looking for and what kind of work we are talking about: we are looking for someone who has conducted a quantitative survey-based evaluation in a developing country. We will employ two people like this to go to Kenya for at least one month this May. The work will actually be quite self-explanatory in my opinion due to the MPAT and its nature. The MPAT is great!
Please let me know if you would like to see a job description. I will share it with you, and you can share it with anyone you see fit. We need help, and I would love to have these positions filled by the end of this month.
Today I am off to San Francisco to meet the next Foundation Team who is going to the field. I am excited about this opportunity! These are the folks who are going to be at the project site in Kenya for most of 2011. We will all be working together virtually and even for one month in person during this year. It will be great to meet them and work with them in person for a couple of days. And it’s also nice to leave the snow of Ohio in January.
Happy New Year!