Knowledge Management Specialist

About The Kaizen Company

The Kaizen Company, Tetra Tech Company, is an international development consulting firm and an incubator for innovative, scalable solutions that address emerging market challenges and opportunities. Our proven solutions catalyze locally driven, organizational, and institutional performance improvements, and shift the development model into one that is bottom-up and ongoing. We leverage existing knowledge along with new technologies and innovative business models to support local reform that is sustained through market forces.

Kaizen is seeking applications for the position of Knowledge Management Specialist Consultant for the USAID Climate Adaptation Support Activity (CASA), implemented by Tetra Tech with other partner organizations. Kaizen supports the learning aspects of the project.

Background

CASA provides strategic support to USAID Missions and USAID/Washington to advance effective adaptation mainstreaming, programming, and scaling meaningful change. The project provides a suite of services and products to advance effective adaptation mainstreaming, programming, and scaling to effect meaningful change. The project has three main objectives:

Objective 1: Increase actionable information to support the design and implementation of impactful adaptation approaches, interventions, and systems shifts.

Objective 2: Identify strategic and forward-looking adaptation and resilience approaches to support sustainable, scalable, and innovative adaptation.

Objective 3: Expand inclusive capacity strengthening, convening and partnership, and coalition strengthening to support impactful adaptation action.

Objective

To support the USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) with learning for advancing climate adaptation in its work by developing a: (1) learning agenda, and (2) facilitating virtual regional learning events.

Position Summary
Kaizen is looking for a Knowledge Management Specialist to help design and develop a method for gathering, documenting, organizing, and sharing learning from workshops, interviews and other stakeholder engagement and learning events to support BHA in advancing climate adaptation in its work. The consultant will work closely with the Kaizen CASA team and will be responsible for supporting the design and delivery of knowledge management related to developing a learning agenda and facilitating virtual regional learning events to support BHA with learning to advance climate adaptations in its work.

The successful candidate will be familiar with various knowledge management approaches and aware of USAID’s systems, processes, and approaches for knowledge management. They will have experience of working with USAID before. Familiarity with USAID’s humanitarian assistance, climate adaptation, and participatory approaches to design and delivery are preferred.

Main roles and responsibilities include:

• Conduct background research on climate adaptation as it relates to USAID’s humanitarian work.
• Design and develop a method for gathering, documenting, organizing, and sharing learning from workshops, interviews, and other stakeholder engagement and learning events.
• Support with designing surveys, interview questions, and facilitation of learning events to understand knowledge management needs to support BHA’s learnings.
• Support with analyzing and presenting data from stakeholder engagement to identify the knowledge management needs of BHA and its stakeholders.
• Support with collecting data from stakeholder engagement and learning events.
• Contribute to the reports to the client.
• Coordinate with client and donor.
  • Attend weekly meetings with the Kaizen team (when requested)
  • Attend bi-weekly meetings with the client/donor (as requested)

Qualifications

• Experience working in a global team, leveraging technology and innovative approaches to make knowledge accessible to users to learn and improve their work.
  • Experience in putting in systems, processes, and policies for gathering, documenting, organizing, and sharing data for learning.
• Experience designing and delivering knowledge management for USAID.
• Aware of USAID’s systems, processes, and approaches for knowledge management.
• Experience in collaborating with clients and problem-solving to meet the client's needs.
• Bachelor’s degree and ten (10) years of relevant experience OR Master’s and eight (8) years of relevant experience in knowledge management.
• Minimum five (5) years of experience in international development.
• Familiarity with USAID’s humanitarian assistance, climate adaptation, and participatory approaches to design and delivery are desired.

Location: Remote

LOE: 8 days

Timeframe: July – December 2024

The KM Specialist will support the following project activities related to knowledge management:

(1) BHA Bureau Learning Agenda:

• Background Research: Review relevant documents, including BHA's internal vision document, other pertinent BHA learning documents, and CASA's learning agenda literature review. This review should encompass peer-reviewed and grey literature on key learning, innovation, and research needs to advance adaptation in developing countries.
• BHA Consultations & Socialization: Conduct 10-12 consultations with recommended BHA staff engaged in adaptation-related work from various teams across the Bureau. Share a shortlist of key findings with interviewees after completing the interviews. Host two one-hour sessions to introduce the key findings and proposed framework of the learning agenda to BHA staff more broadly.
• Draft Learning Agenda & Review: Draft an initial high-level framework that synthesizes information and perspectives from the initial consultations and learning on organizing BHA lessons learned, best practices, and research outcomes from across the Bureau's portfolio of investments. Include recommendations for priority learning areas, ongoing information management, and key metrics for tracking progress. The draft learning agenda will propose a framework for gathering, documenting, and organizing learning that aligns with BHA's vision document. BHA will have the opportunity to review and provide feedback on this draft.
• Final Learning Agenda & Dissemination Plan: Submit a final learning agenda that incorporates and addresses USAID and CASA feedback and comments.

(2) BHA Implementing Partner Regional Learning Event:

• Develop Workshop Agenda and Facilitation Plan: Develop a facilitation plan for a one-day virtual meeting in a region to be determined with the BHA learning team. The plan should focus on identifying climate adaptation learning questions and resource needs related to implementing partners' work, as well as generating learning and identifying resources to answer those questions. The facilitation plan will encourage sharing learning experiences, case studies, and evidence-based learning across projects, regions, and sectors. BHA will have the opportunity to review and provide feedback prior to the workshop.
• Host Regional Learning Event: Manage the logistics, coordination, and facilitation of the one-day virtual meeting for BHA implementing partners. The event aims to help partners understand each other's work and how it relates to climate adaptation, USAID's climate strategy, and BHA's climate action plan. Participants will generate learning questions on climate adaptation related to their specific work and context. They will then leverage their collective experience and the expertise of participating resource experts to answer these identified learning questions in small groups organized thematically around issues of common interest and experience.
• Document Findings & Key Insights: Compile a short follow-up brief to highlight key findings from the meeting, identify relevant resources, and support the cultivation of a community of practice among BHA implementing partners. The brief will analyze and synthesize the discussion, evidence, and learning from the learning session. This document will be shared with the workshop participants.