Field Assistant (research)

Tanzania Natural Resource Forum (TNRF) is an Arusha based network organization that focuses on the improvement of natural resource governance in Tanzania. TNRF brings members and partners together and helps them to bridge the gap between their local natural resource management needs and practices and national natural resource management priorities, policies, laws and programs. One of the programs managed by TNRF is the Poverty and ecosystem Impacts of payment for wildlife conservation initiatives in Africa: Tanzania's wildlifeManagement Areas (PIMA). TNRF is currently looking for a

Field Assistant (research)

Mbarang'andu-Tunduru-Liwale

As a field assistant helping with research, you will be responsible to work under the TNRF programmes department to execute plans and activities as agreed with other implementing partners, with most of your responsibilities relating to field stakeholder engagement and field data collection. Among other responsibilities you will be expected to facilitate and coordinate participation, information sharing and analysis, and networking between partners and other stakeholders; to liaise between this and other projects with similar objectives and focusing primarily on agro-pastoral livelihoods and wellbeing; to strengthen learning, information flow, training and capacity development among partners; to facilitate engagement between local communities in the target area and district level decision-makers in collaboration with partners under the programme.

PIMA project:

TNRF, together with TAWIRI, University College London, Imperial College London, Copenhagen and UNEP-WCMC, are beginning a new ESPA-funded collaboration on the ecological, social, economic and political/governance effects of Tanzania's Wildlife Management Areas. Focusing on different WMAs in detail, including Mbarang'andu in Namtumbo, Tunduru-Nalika in Tunduru District and Liwale-Magingo in Liwale District, PIMA will explore the outcomes of the wildlife management areas now being implemented across Tanzania. PIMA will compare households and villages before and after WMA implementation, as well as inside and outside WMAs, to study the ways that WMAs have changed ecosystem health and people's wellbeing. TNRF focuses on the social side, especially impacts on governance of and access to local natural resources, on people’s livelihoods, and on their social and religious lives. This project is partnered by the Authorised Association Consortium (AAC) umbrella organisation for all WMAs in Tanzania, and works through in-depth engagement with users, government and practitioners as well as entrepreneurs. PIMA hopes to form the basis for fine tuning national policies and improving social and environmental sustainability of Tanzania's flagship community based natural resource management programme. 

The role of field assistant (research):

To be successful in this job, the candidate needs to understand and uphold the role of TNRF as a Civil Society Organization and a multi-stakeholder forum for discussing issues around natural resources management. The candidate must also be able to develop and maintain relations within and outside the organization and you must possess excellent communication vision and skills. In addition, you should have relevant experience in managing stakeholder engagement, qualitative and quantitative surveys. The successful candidate will have the following specific duties:

1. To do field work in in rural areas including conducting survey interviews and participating in quality checking and follow-up on the collected data;
2. To translate documents and records of relevance to the study from Kiswahili to English and transfer them to digital media; and
3. To assist in all aspects of the logistics surrounding the field work effort, including, for instance, procurement and maintenance of tools and materials.

Essential: You must have relevant experience of field research in relation to issues of rural livelihoods and natural resources dependency; ,  experience in carrying out surveys, questionnaires and interviews, preferably with rural agro-pastoralist communities,  and willingness to learn methodologies. You must be passionate about the need for improved rural livelihoods and natural resources governance and strengthened land and livelihood rights for rural people. You must be fluent in English and Kiswahili (including grammar, structure, punctuation and spelling). Experience from the regions of Iringa, Ruvuma, Mtwara and Lindi is advantageous.

Desirable: ideally you will have proven experience of working in civil society networks at community and national levels. You will be computer literate in MS-word, and other relevant software packages. A good understanding of the governance, development and the natural resource management sector with respect to rural areas in Tanzania would be an asset.

Candidates for this job are kindly requested to send their CV accompanied by a cover letter to Patricia Tarimo p.tarimo@tnrf.org. For enquiries about the job, TNRF or the programme, please contact j.olila@tnrf.org. Cover letters and CVs should be sent latest by 12^th of March 2014. The interviews will be conducted 15^th of March 2014, most likely in Morogoro. Start of job is 20^th of March 2014.