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 Quality Officer – Position (1) in Uganda. The successful candidate will join our high performing Field Operations Team.
The Program Quality Officer will manage a team of 22 Youth Leaders across multiple districts as they carry out their activities for the program & Community Unit administration, Lead all training activities for the Youth Leaders assigned across the region. Take the lead on communications, Support the M&E data collection & reporting through the youth leader team as well as providing quality checks on M&E data. Ensure quality implementation of the program through rigorous monitoring & providing quality program feedback. Coordinate all survey activities in the region & ensure accuracy & timely execution of reporting in all regions and Participate in the mapping out of the survey areas & data analysis. You will report to the Field Operations 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
1. Youth Leader Performance Management (30%)
2. Youth Leader Training & Coaching (25%)
3. Quality assurance -skills lab observation (15%)
4. Data Coordination Support(30%)
Youth Leader Performance Management (30%)
• Lead 1:1 meetings with youth leaders bi-weekly. Review work plans, set weekly priorities & align youth leader goals on monthly basis
• Lead weekly conference calls to address challenges and concerns of Youth Leaders & keep the youth leaders up to date with program changes
• Lead annual staff appraisals of youth leaders. Complete performance development process and submit to HR.
• Coordinate and lead Youth Leader capacity building program and their regional meetings.
• Act as Hiring Manager for all Youth Leader recruitment needs: support Youth Leader recruitment guide update and sit on interview panel as and when required.
• Oversee VIP graduate-program activities for the region by checking in with Youth Leaders on progress and ensuring that they have the capacity and tools necessary to carry out activities effectively.
Youth Leader Training & Coaching (25%)
• Lead Youth Leader induction for newly hired. Facilitate 1 week training, oversee youth leader job shadowing.
• Support onboarding of new youth leaders & also provide tailored coaching to youth leaders.
• Constantly plan & communicate Training plan & program changes to youth leaders.
• Empower Youth Leaders to develop, clear & be in constant communication & coordination of activities with the mentors in the VIP program.
• Lead monthly youth leader capacity building program. Including preparing for youth leader training and providing content related feedback to LEEP team .Facilitate the monthly training.
• Observe mentors during induction & training to ensure high quality mentors.
Quality assurance -skills lab observation (15%)
• Through the Youth leaders ensure that mentors conducting the GMs & Skills labs are observed & observation forms submitted to the M&E department.
• Work with the Youth leaders to ensure that they submit the observations forms, participation trackers ,graduate form & missions data at the end of every bootcamp.
• Ensure that the Youth Leaders are meeting the VIP program monitoring target at all times.
• Use M&E reports to support the mentors & close VIP bootcamp implementation gaps.
• Checks quality of Youth Leader and mentor reporting, including all M&E reporting.
• Collect ,compile & share all the youth leader observation feedback forms with M&E for data analysis.
• Train Youth Leaders to increase their knowledge on program activities & tracking & ensure mentors implement bootcamp according to design.
• Ensure trackers , forms, mission data are accurate and information is submitted timely.
• Communicate regularly with the Field Operations Manager. to ensure that program management concerns are addressed timely and with appropriate urgency
Data Coordination Support(30%)
• Ensure quality implementation of the program through rigorous monitoring & providing quality program feedback
• Support M&E in the dissemination & collection of the VIP centricity forms
• Work with M&E to develop data collection tools & also to improve on the data collection processes.
• Setting timeliness & ensuring that Youth Leaders adhere to the reporting submission timelines.
• Train Youth Leaders on the importance & usage of the data collection tool. Coordinate all survey activities in the region & ensure accuracy & timely execution of reporting in all regions
• Participation in the mapping out of the survey learning questions & data analysis
• Leads student focus groups to check on bootcamp quality implementation.
• Document all survey learnings and share with the VIP bootcamp implementation team.
• Leads mentor focus groups to check on VIP bootcamp quality
Qualifications
• Bachelor’s Degree Required Experience
• Minimum 3 years professional experience
• Experience leading a team, managing finances, program reporting
• Excellent computer skills required
• Experience working within the education sector in East Africa
• Excellent Personnel Management skills
• Project management Skills
• Knowledge in financial management
• Strong writing and communication skills
• Strong interpersonal and leadership skills.
• Experience in leading and coaching a team
• Thoroughness when accomplishing tasks and paying attention to detail
• Systems oriented, high integrity
• Excellent customer service, general management and strong personality.
• 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?
• What Is Educate! About?ence during the whole recruitment exercise.
• Conduct reference checks; prepare a summary report of interviews held and share with all relevant stakeholders including but not limited to the HR Manager, the hiring team and Country Director.
• Make offers to successful candidates and collect all relevant documents at time of recruitment of new staff before their first date of work.
• Prepare contracts for all new staff, staff in new positions and contract addendum for staff contract changes and ensure timely signing of contracts.
• Ensure that probationary clauses in the new staff contracts are duly signed after the probationary period.
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.
Job application procedure
Interested and Qualified? Click here to apply
More Information
- Address Mbarara, Uganda, East Africa