Website Care India

POSITION/DESIGNATION

District Mentor

GRADE/LEVEL

Grade F

PROJECT/UNIT

India Partnership for Early Learning

PROJECT DURATION

5 years

POSITION DURATION

2 years (Till 2025)- subject to extension

REPORTS TO

State Project Lead

LOCATION

District Location – Bihar and Jharkhand

TRAVEL

40% – within or beyond program areas

ABOUT CARE

CARE is a not-for-profit organisation working in India for over 70 years, focusing on alleviating poverty and social injustice. We do this through well-planned and comprehensive projects in health, education, livelihoods and disaster preparedness and response. Our overall goal is the empowerment of women and girls from poor and marginalised communities leading to improvement in their lives and livelihoods.

During FY 2020-21, CARE India directly reached out to 52.7 million people through 53 programmes across 18 states, covering more than 130+ districts. We are part of the CARE International Confederation, working in 100 countries for a world where people live with dignity and security.

CARE India seeks a world of hope, tolerance, and social justice, where poverty has been overcome and people live in dignity and security.

Our goal is to ensure that women and girls from the most marginalized communities are empowered, live in dignity and their households have secure and resilient lives. CARE India aims to accomplish this goal by working with 50 million people to help them have quality health, education, livelihoods and overcome the effects of disasters.

CARE continues efforts towards poverty alleviation with focus on women and girls. We hope to impact 100 million people by 2030.

Our employees are committed to CARE’s values, Code of Conduct, and safeguarding commitments towards a safe workplace for all, including the principle of ‘do no harm’. They are also responsible to uphold and strengthen our safeguarding commitments in their role. To know more about our safeguarding policies please visit our website link given below.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

India Partnership for Early Learning (IPEL) is a USAID funded project that aims to ensure all children (girls and boys) from Early childhood education to early grades (grades 1&2) are positively impacted in four Indian states (Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, South Delhi Municipal Schools). The ultimately goal of the project is to ensure that all children (age 3-6) attending AWCs/Balvatika/preschools attain school readiness by age 6; and children (age 6-8) attending early grades (1-2) acquire reading fluency and comprehension, number recognition, two-digit addition and subtraction, express emotions safely, and express understanding of emotions of others verbally or through pictures by end of grade 2 in four intervention states. The project is designed to work very closely with national and state education &WCD department and their institutions to work, influence and advocate on the agenda of Early Childhood Education focusing on Foundational Learning and Numeracy (FLN). IPEL project IPEL project has a central and state level Project Management Unit, having experts on foundational learning, to engage, influence, and technically guide department of education and its key institutions for effective delivery of foundational learning and numeracy program in the state. The state PMU is located within the department of education in Bihar and Jharkhand and works closely with senior leadership and other key functionaries. The key technical area for IPEL are- Effective FLN content and materials for teachers and children, Robust and quality capacity building approach and review system, FLN vision, budget and financing, Quality educational monitoring and learners’ assessment tracking system and Empowered community engagement in each of the state. It will work towards addressing issues and challenges faced by marginalized children and girls in the states to ensure every child in the state attends school and acquire learning.

The project is implemented by consortium of 4 organizations (CSF, Room to Read and KPMG) led by CARE to work with state and national government.

JOB SUMMARY

CARE is looking for an individual who would be managing and guiding a team of 5 district fellows in Jharkhand and Bihar state respectively. District Fellow will be responsible for ensuring that the FLN workstreams and the interventions get activated (as per Project Work Plan) in the selected districts. Ther person will be responsible for providing guidance to a team of District Fellows in implementing the desired strategies in and around the District Resource Center (located at DIET) and schools. The person will also be responsible for collating the feedback and learnings from the ground and work closely with the project technical team at state.

The person must show willingness to adapt to the dynamic nature of work, handle multiple priorities and travel within the state.

The role will report to the State Lead IPEL of the state.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Key responsibilities (not limited to)

Support district fellows in rolling out state FLN Project Annual Work Plan and its completion in respective districts.
Engage, maintain, and influence district level education and WCD/ICDS department/functionaries to roll out of NIPUN work plan of state.
Lead and guide a team of all District Fellows and manage their work and performance.
Ensure internal coordination with consortium partners for day to day functioning of district fellows.
Work closely with district fellows and DIET leadership to capacitate DIETs on FLN, create required resources and develop FLN compliant schools in each of the assigned districts.
Ensure setting up and functionalization of Resource Centers at the district level and ensuring their FLN compliance.
Support district level capacity-building activities including workshops and learning modules for different stakeholders.
Conduct continuous program monitoring (field visit, interaction, etc) to understand the progress to guide the fellows and govt functionaries as well as to reporting to key stakeholders through insights from the state FLN monitoring system.
Document the best practices from the districts to be able to scale up for the rest of the districts in the state (including documentation of project activities/programs/successes and learning through report, case study, films/photos).
Prepare monthly summary report of achievement of the work done by the Fellows across the state.
Coordinate and facilitate internal team’s field visits, including field visits for representatives of government and donor to district/schools/AWCs.
Identify any procurement, management, administrative needs in the assigned districts and work with state lead to get it fulfilled.
Organize monthly review and planning meeting of district fellows and build their capacities with support of technical persons at PMU.
Support in planning and conducting capacity building programs of SRG / DRGs.
Any other work assigned by State Project Lead.

Please Note: The role and responsibilities outlined above are not exhaustive list of tasks. The need for flexibility is required and the job holder is expected to carry out any other related duties that are within the employee’s skills and abilities whenever requested by the Line Manager / Business Head

KEY RELATIONSHIPS

State PMU – Program Managers; Central PMU- Technical Specialists

Monitoring Officer

QUALIFICATION & EXPERIENCE

Essential:

A Bachelor’s/master’s degree (preferred) in education and development.
5-8 years of hands on field level experience in implementing education projects with state governments or for an education corporation or not for profit.
Knowledge about the school education system of the state and related processes.
Experience in project implementation in coordination with government.

Desirable:

Understanding about creation of child centric foundational learning environment in schools/classroom/libraries/communities etc.
Should have successfully led a team of at least 4-5 people.
Experience of managing diverse and senior stakeholders in the state and district such as State Project Directors, Directors, DIET Principal, faculties etc.
Mobilization & communication skills.

SKILLS & COMPETENCIES

Communication skills:

Able to articulate and communicate well to all stakeholders (both verbally and in writing) in a manner that meets the audience-specific needs

Language skills:

Able to read, write and speak impactfully in English and local language at an expert level

Team Management & Collaboration / People skills:

Adept at co-creation: naturally collaborative and solutions focused
Conflict resolution: comfortable with negotiating and resolving conflict; seeking clarity and testing assumptions.
Able to reflect, be empathetic, and a good listener

Strategic Thinking and Analysis:

Big picture / critical thinker (able to think clearly and rationally and select the best method as appropriate) / connector (able to spot gaps, establish needs and opportunities) analytically to influence decision making

Change Management: