KickStart Water Level Researcher Job in Kenya

KickStart is an award-winning, nonprofit, social enterprise with a unique solution for fighting poverty in Africa. We design and mass-market simple, money making tools that poor entrepreneurs buy and use to create highly profitable businesses.

KickStart’s best selling devices are their human powered, MoneyMaker irrigation pumps. These low cost pumps are sold in local retail shops and enable farmers to move from subsistence to commercial irrigated farming.

The farmers grow high value crops throughout the year, increase their net annual incomes by over $900 and lift their families out of poverty. Over 105,000 farmers in Africa are already using these pumps and 1700 more are buying these pumps every month.

We’re currently developing a new pump that will lift water from deeper than our current pumps. To finalize design and properly assess the market opportunity, we are looking for more data on the water levels & well depths in high potential regions of Kenya.

Therefore, we are seeking an independent, personable, analytical, and detail-oriented individual to help us gather shallow well water level data in the field.

Principle Accountabilities:

This person, over 3.5 months (starting in mid-April), will be responsible for the following:

• Building a comprehensive work plan working with the Product Management, Engineering, and Impact Monitoring team to map out the locations where they will randomly sample well-depths, water levels, and measure diameters of wells
• Developing a database of accumulated data including mapping out the data that we have already collected around areas where our pumps have been sold
• Physically traveling to farms, liaising with farmers, and measuring depths of water in the field/on farms across areas of Kenya
• Data transfer via text messages on details of findings everyday: including GPS coordinates, water levels, diameters, and general farm information
• Sorting through the collected data using Google Maps or Crowdmap and ensuring the data is mapped correctly
• Working with a GIS specialist to help organize and analyze the data to help us drive recommendations for our new pump on areas of market entry, average well-depths, and farmer feedback on viability of our new pump

Necessary Skills and Experiences

• Must be fluent in Kiswahili and English
• Must be able to travel on the road independently for 3+ months via bus and on motorcycles
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills –doesn’t shy away from asking people questions and a great communicator/prober
• High attention to detail – a copious note taker who doesn’t miss a beat; great at organizing information and compiling reports
• Results-oriented – proven “self-starter”
• Computer literate – especially with the Office suite (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint)

Desirable skills and experiences:

• Experience and knowledge of farmers and farming
• Experience and knowledge of areas across Kenya including Western, Nyanza, Central, Southern Rift Valley, and Coast
• Experience with Excel and Google Maps/Google Earth, especially on mapping routes and uploading information
• Great graphical and spatial awareness – can navigate many places and has a sense of directions even in new locations

How to apply

If you believe you have what it takes to handle this opportunity, kindly email your one page Application Letter, together with your CV (maximum of 3 pages), with the position in the subject line of your email to HR@kickstart.org by April 11th, 2011.

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