Poverty and Social Protection Specialist – Cambodia IDPoor Evaluation At CUFA

Cufa is an International Development Agency with a focus on promoting financial inclusion and increasing financial literacy and improving economic livelihoods. Cufa has been developing community access to affordable financial services in the Asia Pacific region for 50 years, working cooperatively at grassroots through to government levels to create sustainable livelihoods, improve lives, and relieve poverty. Cufa is an experienced project implementing agency for a wide variety of bilateral and multilateral funding partners.

Cufa is seeking a Poverty and Social Protection Specialist to work on an evaluation of the Identification of Poor Households (IDPoor) program, implemented by the National Social Protection Council. The IDPoor program is a core tenet of Cambodia’s nascent social protection system. It is the definitive platform whereby poor households are identified to be eligible for social assistance programs including cash transfers, health programs, and COVID-19 relief.

Cambodia’s National Social Protection Council is currently leading a mid-term review of Cambodia’s National Social Protection Policy Framework, 2016-2025. It has commissioned a rigorous evaluation of the IDPoor program, deploying mixed-method impact evaluation methodologies, with quantitative and qualitative data collection components.

We are seeking an experienced researcher and specialist in poverty targeting, social protection systems, with strong knowledge of impact evaluation methodologies to contribute to evaluation design, implementation, data analysis and the delivery of policy recommendations to NSPC and the Government of Cambodia. The position will report to the Project Team Leader/Evaluation Specialist and Cufa’s technical and project management team.

Responsibilities

• Lead the collection and review of relevant literature including assessments of the IDPoor program, similar programs in other countries, and other relevant literature on the IDPoor program, poverty dynamics, poverty identification and targeting, social assistance programs, community-based and participatory approaches, and the use of ICT-based platforms for social assistance to identify key issues and considerations for the evaluation.
• Contribute to evaluation design by providing evidence-based recommendations to the Team Leader on best practice methodologies and evaluation strategies, devising key evaluation topics and question.
• Contribute to stakeholder consultation with an agreed list of key evaluation stakeholders to seek stakeholder input to inform evaluation design.
• Contribute to evaluation design, development, and delivery throughout the course of the project timeline.
• Contribute to data analysis of collected qualitative and quantitative data for key findings.
• Provide high-quality support to the Team Leader to prepare of a final Evaluation Report comprising key policy recommendations for the NSPC, as well as the dissemination of the evaluation findings at two key workshops.
• Work collaboratively with the Team Leader, project team and Cufa’s technical and project management teams to deliver high quality outputs.
• Other relevant tasks as necessary.

Selection Criteria

• At least 10 years’ experience leading field work and applied research on poverty identification, poverty targeting, and design and implementation of social assistance and social protection schemes in less-developed countries.
• Expert knowledge of impact evaluation design and methods and techniques for data collection and analysis, including mixed method evaluations comprising both qualitative and quantitative components.
• Experience working on poverty targeting, poverty identification, social assistance schemes or relevant topics in Asia, preferably in the Southeast Asian region.
• Demonstrated capacity to find and review key literature on IDPoor and relevant topics, and take key findings form literature to develop the evaluation design.
• Demonstrated capacity to analyse qualitative and quantitative data for key findings and to answer the targeted evaluation lines of inquiry.
• Familiarity with the Cambodian IDPoor program and/or social protection system would be an advantage.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills in English – compulsory requirement.