Madhi Foundation - Associate Director - Programme Design & Delivery

About Madhi :

Madhi Foundation was established in 2016 as a non-profit organization committed to the cause of bridging the equity gap in education for children across India. The Foundation draws its inspiration from the Tamil proverb, "Destiny can be conquered with intellect (Madhi)". Madhi Foundation specifically works to solve the foundational learning crisis in India. Our vision, "Foundational Learning First, so every child is set up for success", guides our every action and gives our work the purpose and direction it needs.

What we do :

Madhi works closely with the Tamil Nadu School Education Department to conceptualise and implement large scale quality improvement programmes in Tamil Nadu's government schools. Over the course of the next 5 years Madhi will strengthen its existing programmes in the state (as well as undertake new programmes) with the singular aim of ensuring transformative improvement in the quality of school education in Tamil Nadu and beyond.

Ennum Ezhuthum: We are currently also working as the 'Chief Management Partner' for Tamil Nadu's official Foundational Learning Mission, The 'Ennum Ezhuthum Mission' - a Rs. 500 Cr Mission of national and regional importance aimed at universalising foundational learning for all children in Tamil Nadu's 37,000 government schools.

Enjoy English: Enjoy English is a tech-based product-service offering aimed at improving foundational English among children from low-exposure to English contexts. It is one of a kind idea that adopts an oracy first approach to language learning which is different from most programmes that adopt a subject teaching approach to English learning.

Communities Enabling Foundational Learning (CEFL): CEFL aims to equip the parents with the knowledge, skills and tools to understand the quality of foundational education their children receive in public schools and in turn, start advocating for improving the quality of education with stakeholders such as teachers, administrators and local political leaders. We support parents to establish peer groups and networks of parents and community members to support each other towards educating their child and collectively demand for the same.

What is the work culture at Madhi like?

- The work culture at Madhi is built both organically and inorganically. We articulate our core values and reinforce them through actions consistently. Team members imbibe Madhi's values and help grow the culture. Our core values (Mission obsession, Empathy, Resilience, Integrity, Inquiry) form the basis of our actions, policy and interactions. Madhi nurtures a collaborative work culture where individual growth and team success go hand in hand.

- Given the nature of our work (our close partnership with the government) we often realise that we work with partners who espouse a work culture that is vastly different from ours which can sometimes create a sense of cultural dissonance. This is not something we are able to change and we expect team members to join us knowing full well that when working with critical partners and stakeholders there would certainly arise a need to adapt and accept the differences and the challenges that come from working in such an environment. We have been fortunate to find team members over the years who have joined us and helped build a strong and purposeful culture and despite our rapid growth we have been able to sustain our culture over time.

Your team (Programme Design & Delivery)

- The job vacancy detailed here pertains to Programme Design & Delivery Team. To know more about the work we do, check out our information brochure at bit.ly/MadhiFdn_LearnMore

- The Programme Design & Delivery sub-vertical comprises four teams: Content Development, Capacity Building, Enjoy English (Delivery) and CEFL (Delivery). These teams are a multifaceted group; comprising content developers, curricular specialists, professional development architects, trainers, project managers and field staff all of whom prize dynamism and versatility in their approach to work. The sub-vertical works closely with the two other sub-verticals namely "State Reform" and "Data & Technology" counterparts to ensure that we are able to deliver high quality projects to all our stakeholders and learn from our implementation to iteratively improve the effectiveness of the programmes.

- The Programme Design & Delivery team's core focus is to develop robust programme models, develop high quality materials and training modules to ensure effective implementation of Madhi's programmes to attain Foundational Learning at scale. All Madhi's teams work together seamlessly to make magic happen day after day, doing whatever it takes to take us closer to the vision of reimagining school systems to eliminate the foundational learning crisis in India.

About the role :

You will be leading an exciting role, with pan-project visibility and oversight. You will be working on ideating and delivering impactful programmes to achieve the organisation's vision and mission. You would lead a highly skilled, energetic and multifaceted team who excel in curricular development, training, field work, and work towards implementation of Madhi's pilot projects in Tamil Nadu.

The challenges you will help solve at Madhi :

- Addressing the unique challenges that the public education space faces.

- Planning and implementing projects applying various permutations and combinations that ultimately address the foundational learning challenges

- Contribute purposefully to the growing body of knowledge on what works and what doesn't work to improve last mile educational outcomes for children, through the public sector delivery; in particular- by contextualising findings to the Indian context.

- We are an outcome-driven organisation and we do not obsess over clocking in and clocking out. - As the sub-vertical head, you will be responsible to identify ways in which we can hold your team accountable to a high bar of excellence with a singular focus on outcomes by setting up systems that let us keep our eye on the ball at all times.

The Job Description :

Below is an indicative set of responsibilities you will be required to lead as part of your role. We believe that a job description is best created collaboratively where the individual joining the team and the senior leadership team together define the role in greater detail so it reflects your aspirations and ambitions as much as it does the organisation's needs. A detailed description can be jointly created once the selection process has been completed and you have accepted our offer of employment.

About the role :

- You will be leading an exciting role, with pan-project visibility and oversight. You will be working on ideating and delivering impactful programmes to achieve the organisation's vision and mission.

- You would lead a highly skilled, energetic and multifaceted team who excel in curricular development, training, field work, and work towards implementation of Madhi's pilot projects in Tamil Nadu.

In this role, some of your responsibilities will include :

Content Development

- Build the overall content strategy & roadmap and that lead to improvement in programme objectives

- Support the Senior Manager, Curriculum & Learning to devise a cohesive, research-based design across content and programme, such that the tools and content offerings accelerate learning outcomes for students, teachers and parents.

- Anchor the creation of all learning assessments of Madhi's projects - including impact assessments (such as baseline/endline assessments and other diagnostic assessments)

Capacity Building

- Consistently propose improvements to the training models through research and implement these as part of contextualised approach to capacity building

- Support the Senior Manager, Capacity Building create the overall training strategy & roadmap and drive effective implementation of the same

- Ensure creation and adoption of teacher and administrator professional development framework to train and on-board teachers, HMs and BRTEs to the programme

- Support in the training execution (from ideation to implementation) for all of Madhi's projects.

Programme Delivery (Enjoy English & CEFL)

- Set up systems and structures to analyse field data and iterate programmatic design based on field insights for supporting project verticals

- Provide regular updates on project progress against key metrics to the Organisational Strategy Team

- Provide periodic updated to the Technology team team to redefine UI/UX for young learners

- Ensure smooth implementation of the programme across all partner schools

- Support the Senior Manager to anchor the end to end delivery from conducting baseline assessments, to programme roll out, troubleshooting issues and finally the endline assessments.

Strategy & Team Management

- Operate with a great sense of ownership and urgency and own all decisions taken by the Programme Design & Delivery team

- Support the Senior Managers of each project vertical to create a vision and set goals for their respective verticals, organize work streams effectively and ensure every team member works towards collective and individual goals

- Support the Senior Managers to create detailed project plans for their respective verticals and ensure the project strategy and plans are robust, comprehensive and in alignment with organizational strategy

- Support the Senior Managers to troubleshoot issues from time to time and create strong support structures that improve efficiency and productivity and help a highly diverse team actualize their potential

- Establish systems and processes to capture learnings from implementation and help the team make incremental changes to the programme to improve process and impact outcomes

You will thrive in this role if you :

- Demonstrate the highest degree of integrity throughout all activities and are obsessed with making learning impactful for the last mile child

- Can conceptualize and report insights from pilot research studies, designed at strengthening existing systems and practices

- Have prior experience of creating strategic, data-driven policy advocacy based on data analysis from field inputs; are comfortable dealing with both quantitative and qualitative data

- Have prior experience in interpreting tabulated/ visualized data sets and in creating comprehensive reports explaining field input data

- Can diplomatically communicate insights from and action required on data which can, at times, be dispiriting

- Are able to problem-solve from first principles, since much of what we do hasn't been done before

- Are highly planned, organised, methodical, meticulous and detail oriented

- Thrive in a deadline oriented environment in creating collaterals for external stakeholders

- Have excellent stakeholder management skills, especially within a public sector setting

- Have an entrepreneurial zest to own and deliver

Prerequisites include :

- At least 10 - 12 years of work experience with a minimum of 4 - 5 years of people management and project management experience

- A bachelor's degree in a relevant subject; qualifications in Education would be an added advantage

- Experience in the education/development sector is mandatory

- Excellent knowledge of MS Office, G Suite, Digital Survey Tools and Data Visualisation Tools

- Excellent written communication and report writing skills in English

- Ability and willingness to work in a startup non-profit environment

This role will report to : Co-Founder, Head of Programmes

Location : Chennai, Tamil Nadu

Please not e: You will be expected to bring your own laptop with updated software (MS Office 2016)

Remuneration : INR 20 LPA to INR 22 LPA