Research Coordinator – Stretch at War Child Holland

Research Coordinator – Stretch (1 job Position in Kyegegwa)

Start Date: As soon as possible

Location: Kyegegwa

Salary Range: UGX Gross between (4,190,416 – 6,502,809)

Reports to: Program Manager in Uganda and functional management by the Researcher STRETCH based in Amsterdam

Contract Duration: 6 months ending 31 Dec 2021

Background

War Child Holland (WCH) is an independent and impartial international non-governmental organization, with programme offices in fourteen countries, investing in a peaceful future for children and young people affected by armed conflict. We strive to empower children and young people while enabling adults to bring about positive and lasting change in the lives of conflict affected children and young people. In the WCH strategy 2016 – 2025, WCH’s Research and Development (R&D) department is responsible for the rigorous development and evaluation of a holistic, multi-level and interconnected care system with interventions focused on child protection, education and psychosocial support and supportive approaches enabling accessibility and quality. For more information on the research agenda, please see here.

WCH has been working in Uganda since 2004 to support children affected by LRA conflict. As the situation stabilized, WCH intended to close down its operations in 2016.  While preparation for closing down were ongoing, the conflict in RSS escalated in July 2016 resulting in a high influx of refugees into Uganda. WCH assessed the refugee situation in November 2016 and decided to start intervention for the refugee response in 2017. WCH implement projects in the area of mental health and psychosocial support, education and child protection in the West Nile and South West of the country, and currently operates with one coordination office in Kampala and five field offices in the West Nile and South West. This terms of reference is for one of the several research-related projects conducted from WCH Uganda office.

The Project

The intervention is an adaptable stigma reduction approach called STRETCH. STRETCH is developed based on literature research, informed by field research in DR Congo in 2018 and Lebanon in 2019 and is currently being improved based on online consultations. While existing stigma reduction interventions mostly focus on single stigmas such as HIV/AIDS or mental illness, STRETCH as an adaptable stigma reduction approach intends to be applicable to various stigmas and is based on the presumption that underlying stigma drivers and strategies are universally comparable. Contextualisation of STRETCH takes place through implementation. In the four phases of the intervention, strategies are applied towards multiple target groups; children and adolescents are a direct and indirect target group. For more information on STRETCH, please see here.

A feasibility study will be conducted in the second half of 2021, implying a mixed-methods study, with emphasis on qualitative data. The aim of this feasibility study is to investigate the applicability, practicality and acceptability of the approach, looking into its potential to positively impact the populations subject to stigma. Specific attention will be given to potential negative consequences. Data will be collected from direct participant, people who decline participation and people close to participants, to understand which changes need to be made prior to further testing (piloting and evaluation). The actual implementation of the feasibility study will take approximately 6 months.

Roles and responsibilities

The main role is the coordination of all aspects of implementation of research activities. Depending on the research, s/he will work in close collaboration with the Researcher STRETCH, based in Amsterdam with frequent travel to Uganda. Other direct contacts are the War Child Uganda staff, local partners (TPO-Uganda for STRETCH), local (academic) contributors and local communities. The RCs will also be part of the global R&D team.

The RC has 8 main areas of responsibility, in collaboration with the researcher for STRETCH:

• HR Function: Recruitment, selection, training of, and coordinating/managing a small local research team, including independent assessors and data entry assistants, in research methods and ethics, amongst others;
• Research implementation: Supervision and coordination of the tasks of the local research team including planning, logistics and transport, budget management, refresher training where required, data management (quantitative and/or qualitative), monitoring of progress and regular reporting to relevant stakeholders, and proactive problem-solving on barriers;

• Collaboration: alignment to the implementation of STRETCH, and the activities of the main partner;
• Ethics: Ethical protocol, ethical research implementation, including managing data collection, reporting and appropriately addressing adverse events triggered by research or the intervention;
• Analysis: Contribute to data analysis through support to data entry, cleaning, coding etc;
• Dissemination: Contribution to a dissemination strategy of the findings to the research participants and other stakeholders; ‘opportunity to join as a co-author on scientific outputs, including journal articles’;
• Representation: Represents WCH at local level i.e. government institutions, working groups, and coordination meetings.
• Research Logistics: Arrange project logistics through timely coordination with Finance and Logistics team in Kampala.

There can be other tasks that are identified to benefit proper research implementation and advance the WCH research agenda.

Reporting

The contract is with the WCH Uganda office, and the RC will be line-managed by the Programme Manager of War Child Uganda. Functional management is done by the Researcher STRETCH based in Amsterdam.

Profile

• At least Masters level degree in relevant field (e.g. Psychology, Social Work, Nursing, Education, Public Health, Social Sciences)
• At least 3 years’ experience in conducting qualitative field-based research with human research participants in a relevant field (e.g. psychosocial support or child protection)
• Experience in the supervision and training of research assistants
• Excellent communication skills in English (oral and written) and local language/s of Kyaka II refugee settlement such as French, Kiswahili, Kinyarwanda
• Ability to operate independently with remote supervision, as well as strong ability to work in a team
• Open-minded, eye for detail, demonstrated strong interpersonal skills and coordination skills.
• Ability to work with qualitative data analysis software
  Desirable:
• Ability to be field-based (Kyaka II/ Kyegegwa)
• Experience with research for publication

• Existing relationship/liaison with a national university  or experience collaborating with local research institutes
• Experience in donor reporting

How to Apply

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