Going to School - Director - Operations

Director, Operations, Be! Schools (Going to School)

Location: New Delhi

Minimum work experience : 7 years

Background : Master's Degree in Economic, Management, Public Policy, International Development

Going to School (GTS) is an award winning creative not-for-profit education trust that creates design-driven stories to empower all children with the skills they need to participate in the world around them, solving poverty, unemployment, and inequality.

Through its Be! Schools program, entrepreneurial skills are imparted to government school children through the art of story telling with the help of books designed by GTS. School teachers are trained by GTS to impart these skills. GTS's curriculum has been widely recognised and has also been included in NCERT at the national level. GTS is working closely with the Government of Bihar and Jharkhand. GTS has an MoU to work in 3,000+ Government schools by 2018.

The founder of GTS is an Ashoka fellow, TED fellow and Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum with experience of working with UNICEF as a communications consultant. The COO has extensive experience of having worked with the research arm of Pratham, ASER. GTS's collaborators include Star TV, Dasra, USAID, Nike Foundation, MacArthur Foundation and Google.

Who we- re looking for :

- We're in search of a leader with a vision, a mission, and an ability to deliver in a challenging, changing environment. You'll know how to manage and lead a team of 50-60 people.

- You'll work to deadlines, you'll problem-solve, work to deadlines, be self-motivated, invent, push for excellence, always be moving onto the next problem to solve it and turn it into an opportunity to learn, change and be better at scale.

You'll believe :

- You'll know it matters to teach skills to 150,000 children in Grade 8th and 9th. You'll devise innovative teacher training events, in every district. You- ll work closely with Government officials, understand the state education policy and work with them to launch innovative models of implementation.

- You'll be an exceptional writer. You'll thrive on writing insight reports, project reports. You'll want to get to the bottom of WHY and HOW. How do the poorest young people on the planet learn skills- Why does it matter- What skills must we teach- Where in our project is this not delivering, how can I change that-

- Maybe you've run a company before. Perhaps you've been in charge of a big team in a corporate. Perhaps you're from Bihar and want to make a difference. Whatever your reasons you want a job, a real job, a full-time job, listening to children and conducting research and making that into a story-challenge curricula about enterprise, entrepreneurial skills, the big reason why we- re all here.

- You take on challenges and enjoy commitment. You- re moved by wanting to understand what moves young people.

- You want to find a way to move them out of poverty.

- You will have outstanding communication and inter-personal skills and the ability to work with and inspire middle man-agement to bring in expertise and recommend options.

- You will have excellent organizational, time management and project management skills

- You celebrate enterprise. Sustainable enterprise. Design. Skills. Graphic novels. Epic movies. Change on a massive scale.

- You can lead a team. You can build a solid team and are a team player with proven ability to manage competing priorities, perspectives and stakeholder needs.

- You create new tools, games for children to be able to understand, to be able to tell you their story. You- re driven by empathy and perfection.

- You believe in the power of stories.

- You- ll speak English and can write well in Hindi. You're excited to begin. To commit for minimum duration of two years.

- Your first task will be to tell us how you'll make this happen.

Are you ready :

Interested candidates should submit a cover letter (including 2-3 paragraphs on how the current position at Going to School aligns to their long term professional aspirations)

Salary: Remuneration will be competitive with Indian non-profit pay scales and will depend upon the candidates experience levels.

Travel, stay, food, phone bill and medical insurance would be covered by Going to School.

Job Responsibilities :

- Responsible for management and overall implementation of the Be! Schools program in Bihar and Jharkhand.

- Managing the GTS Bihar and Jharkhand team: Program Managers, Project Associates, Project officers, Administrative officer, District coordinators, Evaluation team and Be! Fund Business Builder/Project Officers.

Government Officials :

- Government of Bihar and Jharkhand: Build and strengthen effective working relationships with key government officials- Principal Secretary, State Project Director (RMSA and SSA), State Project Officer (RMSA and SSA), to implement the skills training programme.

Field level strategy :

- Responsible for the on-ground strategy to ensure children every week read one Be! Book and conduct a skills activity that is then collected (by GTS district coordinators), graded and reported back to the schools on monthly basis.

Problem solving :

- When there are missing activities from a school, district work with the team to take action and ad-vise as how to fix it. Travel to field locations (10+ districts), raise issues with the district team, identify problems at the field level and implement solutions. Document everything for improving implementation in future. Establish relationship with the District Government Officials in all the districts where we are working.

Ensure operations run smoothly, are effective, measurable and achieve our final goal of reducing the dropout rate, increasing attendance and children learn skills.

Report Writing :

- Watch progress of the programme and write/create reports that could be the base of a report to funders and other stakeholders. What we know now-- Art, insight, design, trends, key quotes from kids, teachers- . The insight reports are essential for book creation, skills review, making the program better and communicating to all stakeholders as well as providing a consistent, - storytelling- insight platform. Ensure your insights reach the member of the team who needs to know it i.e. artists, writers, content team, directors.

Mass media partnership :

- Work with partners in Bihar to rollout the multimedia campaign - TV channels, radio sta-tions, newspapers and schools

Project Management Team :

- Communicating constantly and strategizing with the CEO and COO, to monitor the pro-gram daily. Submit reports/insights/project status to the CEO and COO on the status of the program, achievements for the week and plans for the following week.