Innovations for Poverty Action: Project Associate Jobsinghana

Innovations for Poverty Action was born in 2002 when Dean Karlan founded Development Innovations, a non-profit organization dedicated to bridging the gap between academia and development policy in practice.  Dean’s graduate school advisors, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Sendhil Mullainathan agreed to join him on the board of the new organization, along with Ray Fisman, a professor from Columbia. In 2003, Banerjee, Duflo and Mullainathan started MIT’s Poverty Action Lab (now the Abdul Lateef Jameel Poverty Action Lab, or J-PAL), a center at MIT and network of like-minded researchers from around the world. From the beginning the two organizations were set to work closely, and continue to promote a shared vision to this day.  Development Innovations officially changed to Innovations for Poverty Action around the same time in order to show the closely-linked vision of the two organizations.

Each year since then IPA has managed to at least double in size to approximately $25 million in income in 2010. We now have projects in over 40 countries and approximately 500 staff.

 

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) seeks a qualified applicant for the position of Project Associate for the Graduation from Ultra Poverty (GUP) pilot in Ghana. This pilot is one of 10 Targeting the Ultra Poor replications worldwide, and provides a holistic bundle of services and support to the poorest of the poor. GUP aims not only to examine the overall impact of the project, but to disentangle the relative impact of various forms of microsavings, the provision of livestock (as an asset transfer), and opportunities to earn wages. In addition to investigating innovative poverty reduction strategies, the GUP pilot seeks to answer development economics questions relating to labor supply elasticity. This position offers an opportunity to gain first-hand field management experience in an organization undertaking cutting-edge development research.

The Project Associate will work under the Evaluation Coordinator and will collaborate closely with academic researchers and other field staff to perform a variety tasks including, but not limited to the following:

• Supervising qualitative researchers
• Designing, piloting and running surveys to analyze the impact of the GUP program
• Managing survey teams
• Cleaning data and assisting in preliminary analysis
• Conducting pilot exercises on treatment options
• Monitoring project implementation
• Assisting in the writing of project reports and policy memos
• Coordinating with local partners

This position is located in Tamale, Ghana, and the principal investigators are Dean Karlan, Abhijit Banerjee, Chris Udry, Robert Osei, and Bram Thuysbaert.

Desired Qualifications and Experience:

• A Bachelor’s Degree in economics, social sciences, public policy, or related fields
• Experience living in a developing country is a strong plus
• Excellent management and organizational skills along with strong quantitative skills
• Fluency and excellent communication skills in English
• Flexible, self-motivating, able to manage multiple tasks efficiently, and team player
• Demonstrated ability to manage high-level relationships with partner organizations
• Knowledge of Stata (strongly preferred) or other data analysis software is preferred.
• Familiarity with randomized controlled trials preferred.

We are looking for a commitment period of 2 years for this position.

To Apply: If you are interested, please do two things:

1.      Complete the J-PAL/IPA common application( http://apply.povertyactionlab.org/apply/login) indicating that you are interested in applying for a “Type 1” position.

2.      Send an email to [email protected], following these instructions exactly:

In the subject line: Put your full name, first (given) name followed by last (family) name.

Attachments: Please attach ONLY your CV.

In the email body: Copy exactly the following position line:

100349 IPA GUP PA Position-Tamale

Please do not include any text besides the position line(s) in the body of the e-mail.   Adding extra text will interfere with the processing of your application.

Application Deadline June, 2011