The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC offers lifesaving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from war or disaster. At work today in over 40 countries and 22 U.S. cities, we restore safety, dignity, and hope to millions who are uprooted and struggling to endure. The IRC leads the way from harm to home.
The IRC opened the country program in Afghanistan in 1988. Our programs span the range from humanitarian relief to early recovery and development activities, focusing on child protection, education, economic wellbeing, health, and power. The IRC works in 10 provinces throughout Afghanistan, among which some of the most security volatile, and employs over 1000 staff.

Compliance with Policies:

• Compliance with the IRC WAY (our standards for professional conduct) is a responsibility shared by all involved in delivering on the IRC’s mission. We must abide by the IRC Way and Safeguarding Policies all the time.
• The IRC has zero tolerance approach to the IRC Code of Conduct including safeguarding violations being committed by its staff, consultants, contractors, volunteers, interns, suppliers, vendors, sub-grantees/partners, implementing partners or any other associate.

The National Research Co-Investigator- Qualitative will work together with the IRC’s Airbel and AQBE Project Management Unit to support the design and delivery of the following AQBE research deliverables over the 5-year project period:

• Rapid Education Risk Analysis (RERA): annualized surveys, including FGDs, KIIs, undertaken to understand the key barriers and enabling factors to safe access for all learners in the targeted AQBE provinces. RERA’s will utilize a standard USAID toolkit developed to understand risk and mitigation factors to reduce risk around safe access to quality education.
• Household Assessment: baseline, midline and end line assessments, including the use of IRC’s AMAL Toolkit (Annual Monitoring of Afghan Learning). These assessments will take place in a sampling of targeted households and communities across eight AQBE provinces and will include: adapted EGRA and EGMA; adapted Social Emotional Learning (SEL) questionnaires, and household demographic surveys. For the baseline surveys, the consultant is expected to provide recommendations/evidence to IRC’s Airbel and AQBE MERL Lead in as far as whether the project should adopt a standard baseline or a rolling baseline.
• Transition Assessments: will be designed and undertaken in Y3 and Y5 of AQBE programming, with the intention of measuring transition for CBE learners into public schools, as well as evaluating the causal factors for successful transitions of learners, in eight supported AQBE provinces.

• 7-10 years of research experience in the related field, with a specific expertise in Qualitative Research analysis
• Master’s or PHD degree in the field of Education or research methods.
• Experience with primary data collection (FGDs) and analysis (tool development, testing, validation).
• Experience with qualitative data analysis and reporting.
• Experience with qualitative data collection training and oversight of enumerators.
• Experience in education context in Afghanistan.
• Experience working in Afghanistan and knowledge of education and child protection actors and systems in Afghanistan.
• Experience with local working languages of Afghanistan (Dari & Pashto).
• Written and spoken English skills.