Job Opportunity for Code India Fellowship – Director at NavGurukul

About NavGurukul:

NavGurukul is a not-for-profit founded in 2016 and is on a mission to create access to aspirational careers for students from marginalized communities. We are committed to working on profound transformation for our students so they can hold the same jobs and live the life of similar possibilities as people from the top of the pyramid assume. We imagine an equitable higher education alternative where students learn the right skills, mindsets, and the ability to learn on their own to thrive in the world. 

What we do:

NavGurukul’s flagship Residential program works with learners from underserved communities to help them become programmers and gives them a guaranteed job once they finish the program. Currently, we are training 1000+ students in seven fully funded residential centres across various states in India. Six of our seven campuses have only girl students. The focus on gender is a conscious choice, as inclusion is one of the core principles guiding our choices and focus areas. 

The residential program is open for students who have finished just 10th grade and are 17 years of age. We are expanding our offering to digital careers other than programming, such as design and management. 

So far, we have placed around 500+ students in software jobs in the tech industry with various IT giants and product startups. Our campuses are self-governed spaces that the students manage through elected student bodies. The learning on NavGurukul campuses is guided by self-paced pedagogy with a strong focus on peer learning.

Besides the Residential program, we have two more programs: Meraki and Code India Fellowship. Through Meraki, we work with students (and teachers) from government schools and ITIs through an online offering to help students learn basic English, touch typing, and programming. 

Code India Fellowship is another high-impact ambitious program we at NavGurukul have piloted and are ready to launch in a new avatar soon. Read below for more details. 

Code India Fellowship – A new initiative within NavGurukul:

NavGurukul is launching Code India Fellowship (CIF) in partnership with Niti Aayog. The broad idea is to onboard high-aptitude and mission-aligned young graduates for a one-year fellowship. It places them in Government high schools to transform students’ learning and life outcomes in these institutions. CIF fellows will be trained to ensure that they: 

• Understand the curriculum well and can teach it 
• Understand NavGurukul’s unique pedagogy 
• Own outcomes and are deeply empathic for their learners 
• Can manage all stakeholders well (School Administration, Students, Peer Network, etc.)

In India, where girls are married as soon as they are 18, CIF has an ambitious goal to enable young women to have jobs or admission to advanced training opportunities by the time they finish their school education. 

We are announcing this partnership in early December 2022 and are looking to hire and train fellows in the next five months and place them in schools beginning next academic year. We see a lot of interest from other state governments and committed funders. CIF can significantly impact the higher education and employability space in the next few years. 

About the role: 

As the director of CIF, you will be the CEO of the Code India fellowship. As a part of your role, you will set up the end-to-end strategy and execution for CIF. In the following year, you will: 

1. Maintain Partner Relationships

• Work closely with Niti Aayog and states to identify the right schools and ITIs to participate in the program
• Work closely with Niti Aayog to source fellowship applications
• Work closely with the chosen schools and ITIs to create a welcoming and productive environment for the incoming fellows
• Proactively set expectations with all partner institutions and keep everyone in the loop regarding the necessary updates

2.  Drive Fellows Recruitment:

• Set a strategy to hire 75 young fellows who are committed and have the suitable skill set
• Set processes to go about the selection and recruitment to ensure fairness, quality, and speed
• Establish and maintain relationships with colleges and universities to do recruitment for this year and the following years
• Ensure the proper communication to make CIF aspirational amongst youngsters who would have many other opportunities

3. Ensure Fellow Onboarding and training: 

• Create fellow onboarding and training experience to ensure a smooth and effective start 
• Design fellow onboarding curriculum and hire master facilitators to deliver the same
• Design fellow HR policies: timeline of joining, reimbursement and leave policies, etc., for the fellows
• Allocate fellows to their schools and ensure their safe and secure relocation to their respective locations

4. Design and Execute Fellow Experience 

• Ensure that fellows understand their jobs and feel equipped to deliver on the same
• Ensure that fellows have a support system to rely on
• Ensure that fellows are constantly learning and growing, ensuring their transformation due to the fellowship experience 
• Ensure fellow performance monitoring and performance management systems are in place
• Design and execute the post-fellowship experience for the fellows

5. Establish ecosystem relationships

• Maintain relationships with other fellowship experiences to learn from their experience and share ours as needed
• For any on-field support and resource mobilization
• To learn and contribute to best practices 
• To create a brand for CIF in the sector

6. To hire and onboard the right team to achieve all of the above 🙂

Apply if you have: 

• An entrepreneurial mindset and a heavy alignment with the theory of change
• Experienced a fellowship brand or/and have participated in designing and running a fellowship program
• Excitement and energy to take Code India Fellowship from zero to one
• Experience delivering learning outcomes in classrooms, ideally for young adults
• Led and delivered a learning project at scale
• Leadership, time management, team management, facilitation, and organizational skills. Having managed diverse, big, fluid teams is a plus
• Understanding of Andragogy (adult Pedagogy) and experience monitoring learning processes (exposure to self-guided and peer-based learning is a plus)
• Ability to question all assumptions about how learning happens and work with first principles to set up processes from scratch
• Problem-solving, mediation, crisis intervention, and negotiation skills
• 10+ years of overall experience and a minimum of 4 years of experience in the education sector. 
• Don’t limit yourself from applying if you think you feel confident reading this. 

Location:

This role would be remote, and you can work from anywhere. Still, ideally, you stay close to UP, MP, and Haryana, where the program is expected to launch, so that you can visit the participating institutions frequently. At the beginning of your engagement with NavGurukul, we would prefer you to work from one of our campuses to have an immersive experience and build a thorough understanding of how things work on our campuses (which can then be borrowed into the fellowship experience). You may also be required to travel to various clusters where CIF schools will be located and stay there for a couple of weeks a few times a year, but we can discuss what may work best for you. 

Compensation & Culture:

NavGurukul salaries are at par with most not-for-profits in the country. For this role, the salary bracket we are currently thinking of is 12 – 14 lakhs per annum. This person in this role will eventually decide the salary structure for this function. If the compensation and fundraising strategy allows, we could revise the above number slightly. So we request you to apply for this role if it works for you, and we can discuss compensation a bit if all other things look positive.  

At NavGurukul, we only do work that we truly believe to be impactful and derive a lot of personal meaning and joy from it. We are also committed to creating an environment of work that is healthy, transparent, and joyful and enables growth and change, both personally and professionally. We have an open, ongoing, non-hierarchical dialogue to ensure the same, and you will be welcome to contribute to it when you are a part of the NavGurukul team.

We are an inclusive and diverse organization and encourage qualified individuals, irrespective of their religion, caste, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, ethnicity, age, or any other dimension of identity, to apply.