Program Coordinator Implementation & Mentor Support - Uganda

Position Overview 

Educate!, an award winning non-profit social enterprise, is looking for a self-driven, highly enterprising, and enthusiastic candidate to fill the Program Coordinator Implementation & Support - Position (1) in Uganda. The successful candidate will join our high performing Program Implementation Team.

The Program Coordinator Implementation & Support will Coordinate mentor onboarding and capacity building inductions and trainings ensuring we have high quality mentors able to deliver a transformative experience for youth and effectively represent Educate! As ambassadors. Implement program learning agenda and strategy to inform opportunities for ongoing program improvements.  Carry out field program quality monitoring, best practices documentation and ensuring procedure compliance across frontline teams. Lead the strategy development and implementation of the mentor program delivery support-ecosystem platforms. Drive continuous learning and iterations to ensure the mentor ecosystems are efficient in meeting the mentor needs while delivering quality program. He/She will report to the Program Manager. 

The right candidate for this opportunity should be excited about working with young and ambitious youth, self-driven, passionate about our mission of creating leaders and entrepreneurs in Africa, and committed to being part of a high performing team!

About Educate! 

Africa has the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population. By 2035, the continent is poised to contribute more people to the global workforce each year than the rest of the world combined. 

At Educate! we're obsessed with impact. We leverage iterative learning to build highly scalable youth employment solutions aimed at unlocking the potential of the world’s youngest continent. 

Educate! prepares youth in Africa learn, earn and thrive in today’s economy by: 

1) introducing an employment-focused school subject into secondary, and 

2) delivering livelihood bootcamps for out-of-school youth, with a focus on marginalized rural girls and young women.

To date, more than 250,000 youth have been meaningfully impacted across Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya, and along the way, Educate! has become the largest youth employment and skills provider in East Africa.

Educate! is a team of over 250 largely African staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We prioritize building an engaging, fulfilling and growth oriented work environment. 50% of our top 30 leaders have been with us for over 5 years, 10+ alumni have started their own organizations and 6 current or former team members were Acumen Fund East Africa fellows. 

We have been backed by top foundations such as Imaginable Futures, Big Bang Philanthropy,  #startsmall, Generation Unlimited, CIFF and Echidna Giving. Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize and a 2015 WISE Award, and has been highlighted by the World Bank’s S4YE's Impact Portfolio, an Al Jazeera documentary, BBC, The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies on scaling education, and the Gates Foundation as a Goalkeepers Accelerator. In 2022, we received a catalytic investment from philanthropist Mackenzie Scott to scale our systems change work.

Educate!'s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year. By 2025, we aim to scale our annual reach by 4x and measurably impact over 400,000 new youth. 

Performance Objectives

Partnership Management (30%):

• Provide oversight over school partnership including collaborating with Exp leadership team to develop school  partnership relationship and  expansion strategy.
• Ensure schools are recruited as per the school profile and expansion targets.
• Build systems to ensure that all partners schools have updated information and fully signed MoU.
• Work with school administrators to ensure that all schools provide the necessary support for program implementation as outline in the MOU especially consistent, optimal and convenient program schedules.
• Lead the development and updating of the partnership guides for all frontline teams.
• Build the capacity of all frontline teams to enable them maintain successful schools and stakeholder relationships.
• Conduct regular feedback check ins with school Heads and Directors including; Calling head teachers in partner schools  to check the progress of the programs and conducting termly focus group discussions to identify program partnership strengths and gaps.
• Provide strategic oversight in the management and dropping of the red schools in the and ensure that information on the red schools database is up to date. 
• Maintain regional red school count below 5%.
• Participate in the co-development of partnership experiments and lead their implementation ensuring that experiment learning questions data is collected, documented and analyzed on time.
• Ensure that all schools recruit  highly aligned and supportive patron teachers. Lead development and implementation of patron teacher training.
• Maintain an updated database of all patron teachers, school administrators and school partnership stakeholders.
• Ensure regular disbursement of monthly, termly and annual school patrons incentives. Document effectiveness of incentives in driving program goals.
• Lead the development of termly school partnership communications and engagements and maintain a calendar to ensure timely engagements.
• Lead development, implementation and learning on strategies to ensure increased engagements on the Head Teacher and patron platforms and and partnership helpline.
• Maintain a partnership risk and mitigation register, track school partnership trends and establish district, regional and national relationships beneficial to school partnerships.

Training and Capacity Building  (25%)

• Conduct needs assessment to identify training requirements and capacity gaps for mentors and co - mentors. 
• Develop training strategy, coordinate session design and lead training to ensure co-mentors are equipped to effectively deliver their roles in the program ecosystem.
• Oversee the new mentor onboarding strategy implementation to ensure new mentors are adequately equipped to provide a transformative experience for youth and represent educate! As ambassadors.. 
• Provide oversight over mentor induction delivery and ensure there is standardization in site management standards to ensure quality.
• Lead training evaluation efforts and document effectiveness of mentor trainings.
• Collaborate with design teams to ensure appropriate mentor training sessions are designed and delivered during peer circles.
• Implement strategies to support and drive mentors to complete learning assignments and targets on the mentor E! Learning platform. Flag learning blockers to the tech and design teams and ensure quick resolutions.
• Work with the Design and experimentation team to maintain an updated database of implementation team training skills. 
• Coordinate efforts to ensure on going Implementation team training capacity building.
• Keep a tracker of all monthly Implementation team trainings and ensure training resources are in the training folders.
• Coordinate efforts to ensure the Implementation team training needs are reflected on consolidated trainer of trainers and mentor induction schedules.

Learning & Quality Assurance  (15%)

• Implement program learning agenda strategy to ensure timely collection and documentation of data related to program delivery learning questions. 
• Coordinator on going mentor surveys in collaboration with Program officers Mentor support to ensure all mentors complete and submit them.
• Carry out field program quality monitoring and ensure that monitoring observations and documented and discussed during program meetings.
• Track and document program delivery best practices and ensure that the new practices are incorporated in trainings and new mentor onboarding.
• Propose at least 2 new strategies termly to improve effective delivery of different Exp components.
• Foster a culture of continuous learning and knowledge sharing within the team for best practice sharing. 
• Document & share success stories with the program officers.  

Mentor Delivery Support-Ecosystem Leadership (30%)

• Collaborate with the Educate! Experience management team to develop the mentor support ecosystem strategy that supports mentors to deliver a transformative experience for youth.
• Develop and maintain the ecosystem mentor experience journey map and ensure that all Implementation teams are on boarded onto their roles in the mentor ecosystem.
• Lead the planning of the termly ecosystem strategy implementation working with program officers mentor support. This includes maintaining a termly ecosystem implementation schedule and resources map.
• Lead the monitoring of the implementation and mentor usage of the ecosystem nodesand  document observations.
• Produce monthly ecosystem usage reports and lead discussions to improve usage during monthly departmental meetings.
• Lead periodic surveys on the ecosystem user satisfaction and use analysis and observation reports to propose iterations to improve ecosystem effectiveness.
• Develop and implement program plans in alignment with organizational objectives. 
• Use the Implementation dashboards to asses program progress against set targets and timelines, and lead discussions on how to use various ecosystem nodes to drive improvements. 
• Collaborate with program officers, to identify and address program implementation challenges and bottlenecks. 
• Stay informed about program related policies, regulations and best practices related to program implementation. 
• Support Program Officers to organize regional events planned by the wider Organization, product and program strategy

Qualifications  

• Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Program Management, Development Studies, Social Works and Social Administration, or Education is required. A postgraduate degree in any of the study areas will be an added advantage.
• At least 4 years’ experience with high-impact educational or livelihood programs involving youths, school administrators, and District Local Governments is required. Proven experience in program planning and management.
• Excellent interpersonal and written communication skills, strategic Skills, project Planning, and Problem-solving skills, program management skills, Productivity technological proficiency, data analysis and reporting and Leadership skills,
• Knowledge of monitoring and evaluation methodologies, proficiency with Google suites, MS Office Suite, with excellent MS Word and Excel skills, etc.
• Should be systems oriented, high integrity with experience in multitasking in a fast – paced environment, set priorities, work independently as well as thrive a team.
• Fits our Five Cultural Tenets (see What is Educate! About? below); Learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here

Terms 

• Salary is commensurate with experience
• Attractive Benefits & Perks including Medical Insurance.
• Location is Kampala, Uganda.

What Is Educate! About?

We’re ambitious. Are you? Educate! is growing fast, so new opportunities are opening up and expanding all the time. We’re inspired by people with drive, and we love to help them reach their full potential. We expect everyone at Educate! to contribute above and beyond their job description, grow their skills, and advance their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey.

1. We put Youth First, Impact-Obsessed - We never forget that Educate! exists to impact youth. We are purpose-driven. We obsess over impact daily and if it doesn’t lead to impact, we want nothing to do with it. We prioritize interacting with and listening to youth. We design and manage the organization to ensure every dollar creates transformative experiences that youth value. 
2. We Exceed Expectations - We take pride in going above and beyond to achieve the best results. When we know what needs to be done, we do it. We don’t wait to be asked and we don’t stop at what is asked of us. We look for solutions as much as we identify problems.
3. We Are Always Learning - We are committed to seeking and applying new knowledge and ideas. We stay open-minded. We know there is always another way and we are excited to learn about it. We continuously look for resources of all kinds from multiple disciplines. We try new things, experiment, grow, and improve. We invest in learning for ourselves and our teams.
4. We are One Team, Many Views - We say what we think while treating each other well. We believe that all people have the same inherent value and that diverse ideas and open dialogue fuel excellence. We constantly strive to create an environment where everyone can and does express themselves freely. We support and respect each other as people and colleagues. We act as one team: We prioritize the organization's mission and goals over team or individual goals.
5. We have the Startup Mindset - We will always keep innovating to grow our impact. We aspire to be game-changing. We never think “we have arrived” or “we’re done.” We question the status quo in our industry. We move fast and embrace change to move towards our long-term vision. We’re not afraid of failure. We interrogate anything that slows us down. 

Every person at Educate! — from interns to the executive director — is evaluated by how they live up to these five cultural tenets. They are at the core of how we achieve our mission and why we work as well as we do.

Educate is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all who interact in our community.  In creating this environment, we encourage people from a variety of cultures, backgrounds and life experiences to join our diverse team.

Child Safeguarding: Educate! is committed to child-safe/youth-safe recruitment, selection and screening. Our recruitment and selection procedures reflect our commitment to the safety and protection of children in our programs. The successful candidate will be required to provide a satisfactory Certificate of Good Conduct as a condition of employment. We reserve the right to decline to offer employment to an individual or terminate an employment contract with an employee that may pose a risk to children and youth.