American India Foundation - National Head - Entrepreneurship

ABOUT AMERICAN INDIA FOUNDATION TRUST

The American India Foundation Trust (AIF) is committed to improving the lives of India's underprivileged, with a special focus on women, children, and youth. The Foundation does this through high-impact interventions in education, health, and livelihoods because poverty is multidimensional. Through its unique value proposition, working closely with local communities, the Foundation partners with NGOs to develop and test innovative solutions and with governments to create and scale sustainable impact. Founded over two decades ago, in the aftermath of the devastating Gujarat earthquake, as a humanitarian initiative by Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ji and Bill Clinton, AIFT has impacted the lives of 16.51 million of India's poor across 36 States and Union Territories of India. Learn more at https://aif-india.org

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

AIF's Livelihoods program envisions a world where poor and vulnerable communities have access to dignified work opportunities, empower them with sustainable livelihoods. Since 2006, the Livelihoods Program has directly and indirectly served 2.20 million people from vulnerable communities. Leveraging technology to provide financial and market linkages, knowledge, skills, and dignified work opportunities, the program helps the communities secure jobs, manage enterprises, and make a respectable living. Since its inception in 2006, through its flagship programs Market Aligned Skills Training (MAST) and Ability Based Livelihood Empowerment (ABLE), AIF Livelihoods has provided program support to 825,960 disadvantaged youth, women and Persons with Disabilities (PwDs), and impacted 343,727 livelihoods.

KEY ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES

The National Head-Entrepreneurship will be responsible for leading various aspects of the Entrepreneurship and self-employment programs such as program design, development, and implementation, fostering partnerships and engagement with government at the district and state levels and, fundraising and donor contract management.

The incumbent will also hire and manage a team of dedicated professionals in multiple project locations across India as well as identify partner organizations (to support implementation & monitoring) to further the Entrepreneurship and self-employment programs.

1. Project Management:

- Lead the project design and development in consultation with key stakeholders.

- Contribute to AIF's strategy development on Entrepreneurship and self-employment programs and execute the strategy.

- Provide thought leadership within AIF on Entrepreneurship and self-employment programs of livelihoods.

- Oversee implementation of the projects under the Entrepreneurship and self-employment programs, across India.

- Prepare and manage a dynamic project implementation plan, in consultation with key team members and government.

- Provide supportive supervision to block-level, district level or state level teams in routine implementation of planned activities.

- Ensure accuracy in projects' data collection and reporting.

- Undertake documentation of the projects for internal learning and donor reporting purposes.

- Engage with government and donor(s) for project planning, review and reporting.

- Facilitate day-to-day project management tasks including all aspects of financial management, human resources management, procurement, and office administration.

- To ensure the retention of donor and continuity of project.

2. Government Engagement:

- Facilitate Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs) with state governments, district collectorates, PSUs for ensuring co-operation from all departments concerned towards the program.

- Establish and maintain regular contact with the government officials, program implementing partners at state and district level for program review and sharing of learnings.

- Engage with state and district governments to encourage adoption of best practices demonstrated in the program including providing support to budget planning.

3. Building Partnerships and Resource Mobilization:

- Proactively work with AIF's Strategic Partnerships team to identify fundraising opportunities from CSR and other institutional donors.

- Support in proposal development and donor contract management, in co-ordination with the Strategic Partnership team and government engagement team at AIF.

- Help in identifying credible partner NGOs/organizations who can partner on program implementation.

- Provide technical assistance and leadership support to implementation partners.

- Network with alliances and other likeminded organizations for replication of the program.

4. People Management:

- Hire, retain and develop a high-performance team for delivering AIF's strategy on Entrepreneurship and self-employment programs.

- Facilitate and coordinate high quality and timely trainings of project team members and other stakeholders.

5. Monitoring and Evaluation (in co-ordination with Learning, Evaluation & Impact team at AIF):

- Coordinate with government in seeking approvals for conducting routine monitoring, baseline, end line surveys, and needs assessment studies, as necessary.

- Facilitate the development, implementation and strengthening of program MIS.

- Undertake field visits to monitor programs as well as conducting periodic program reviews with government counterparts and other partners.

- Provide feedback to and participate in review meetings of the Program Steering Committee on a regular basis.

- Prepare regular monitoring reports, both for AIFT, donors and internal audiences, on the progress of the program.

KEY SKILLS AND COMPETENCIES:

- Post-graduate in Social Science/Management or related fields.

- Minimum of 10-15 years' experience in program management in the Entrepreneurship and self-employment programs and/or sustainable livelihoods space, of which at least 3-5 years should be in a leadership role.

- At least 5 years of relevant sectoral knowledge concerning Entrepreneurship and self-employment programs initiatives.

- Understanding of state and district government structures and previous experience of working with state and local governments.

- Demonstrated skills to performance manage and mentor staff in delivering their job responsibilities.

- Excellent understanding of the employment landscape in India.

- Ability to network and negotiate effectively with a wide range of stakeholders to achieve the objectives of the program.

- A self-starter who can perform with minimal supervision.

- Willingness to travel for at least 30% of time all over India.