Job Opportunity for Innovation & D&I Specialist at American India Foundation in Mumbai

Position: Innovation & D&I Specialist
Program: Livelihoods
Location: Mumbai
Reporting to: SBIF SAMEIP project SPoC / Project Lead
Position Availability: Immediate
Duration: 11 months
Nature of Employment: Contractual
Number of positions: 1
Remuneration: Commensurate with experience

About American India Foundation

The American India Foundation is committed to improving the lives of India’s underprivileged, with a special focus on women, children, and youth. AIF does this through high impact interventions in education, health, and livelihoods, because poverty is multidimensional. AIF’s unique value proposition is its broad engagement between communities, civil society, and expertise, thereby building a lasting bridge between the United States and India. With offices in New York and California, twelve chapters across the U.S., and India operations headquartered in Delhi NCR, AIF has impacted 9.2 million lives across 29 states of India. Learn more at www.AIF.org

About AIF Livelihoods Programs

AIF works closely with the public and private sector to create inclusive and sustainable livelihoods for individuals, families, and communities across India with a long-term goal of equalizing the informal and formal sectors to provide equitable opportunities for all citizens.

The Market Aligned Skills Training (MAST) provides underprivileged youth with skills training and access to formal employment opportunities. It addresses the systemic imbalance between millions of the country’s disadvantaged youth lacking education and basic skills, and its growing industries in need of a skilled workforce. Working closely with employers, to develop market-aligned curricula that meets the need of the industry across the country, AIF provides a three-month vocations training and workplace readiness program to underprivileged young people to empower them with the knowledge and skills needed for employment and success. MAST promotes increased participation of women in the workforce through appropriate skilling and gender mainstreaming. It also promotes entrepreneurship culture amongst women thus making it aspirational to the population at the bottom of the pyramid.

Ability-Based Livelihood Empowerment (ABLE) trains persons with disabilities in fundamental and specialized skillsets and facilitates their entry into the job market through a robust advocacy platform for disability inclusion, promoting inclusive growth in India. With specialized curriculum development for the visually impaired, hearing impaired and orthopedically impaired, the program combines assistive technologies and workplace solutions with career counselling while building capacity of NGOs across India to ensure equal opportunities for all persons with disabilities.

Cumulatively, both these programs have benefitted over 1,40,000 individuals with over 1,00,000 having gained employment across 23 States of India. From among those benefitted, 41% are women and over 17,000 (12%) are persons with disabilities.

About The Project

Project SAMEIP (SBI Foundation and Microsoft India Employability Initiative for Persons with Disabilities) is a pioneering collaborative initiative of SBI Foundation and Microsoft India, to enable career pathways for underserved young Persons with Disabilities in the digitally transformed BFSI sector.

Envisioned to create an enabling ecosystem, this three-year project aims to influence the BFSI sector to adopt inclusion policies resulting in increased hiring, retention and successful career opportunity for PwDs. It aims to build and enhance focus on advocacy to enable the BFSI ecosystem to become disability inclusive. This project aims to enable the BFSI ecosystem in India to become more inclusive through collaborative engagement and result-oriented advocacy with corporates, Government and partners of SBI & Microsoft, to facilitate long term career development of young persons with disabilities.

Key Roles & Responsibilities:

• Support the day-to-day project implementation from an innovation point of view. The ambition is to showcase clear innovations that the project has designed and supported.

• Work on creating the inclusion index as a tool for assessment of corporates, assess corporates on their inclusion strategies, implement best practices on disability inclusion and work to improve their rating on the inclusion index.

• Work on developing a playbook on SAMEIP as a tool for socializing the SAMEIP model and advocacy with other stakeholders.

• Work with employers to inbuild D&I strategies/ best practices in their respective organizational policies, both in letter and spirit.

• Support on strategic matters under Project SAMEIP, find durable solutions when needed.

• Work closely with SBI Foundation to review, collate and adapt global D&I strategies/ best practices to support project implementation.

• Collect and analyze relevant data, and formulate ideas for further research and publication of findings.

• Keep abreast, research, benchmark, and implement best and cutting-edge practices in disability inclusive HR management and contribute to the development of innovative global policies and initiatives

• Contribute updates on activities to the annual communication plans

• Develop methodologies and implementation activities in an innovative and progressive manner, paying special attention to stakeholders needs and requirements.

• Form strong relationships with key stakeholders, including government partners, NGOs, research organizations and communities.

• Advocacy with government partners to implement global best practices on disability inclusion

• Contribute to the identification, design, formulation and negotiation of new projects and programs and draft concept notes and project document briefs for discussion with partners.

• May perform other duties as required.

Desired Candidate Profile.

• Minimum 5 years of experience in managing employment linked skilling program for PwDs.

• Proficient computer skills, Microsoft Office Suite (Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Excel).

• Have a flair for technology, exposed to and experience in delivering training and adept at using virtual learning and communication tools.

• Well informed of PwD market trends, employer needs and best practices in inclusive career services.

• Strong presentation skills

• Excellent communication skills – both written and verbal.

• Possesses a variety of skill sets including time management, multi-tasking, inter-personal and problem-solving ability.

• Consistently approaches work with positive energy and a constructive attitude.

• A team player who is supportive, flexible and ready to take on additional tasks and lead a team.

• Ability to cope with work pressure and work on tight deadlines.

• Ability to work independently with large volumes of data with initiative.

• Ability to work with across teams and supervisors.

• Responds positively to feedback and respects diverse point of views.

Qualification required

• Graduate / Post Graduate degree in Commerce/Science/Social Work.

Application Process: To apply for this position, send your CV and covering letter describing how you meet the specifications for this role and what you bring to it to career.livelihoods@aif.org with subject line “Innovation and D&I Specialist”.

Along with your CV, please also share a two-minute video resume answering these 3 questions:

~ Tell us something about yourself?

~ A brief about your achievements as a Project Manager/Coordinator?

~ Your current/last drawn CTC and expectation from the role?

Please upload a zip file including the CV, Covering Letter and video resume.
Deadline for applications: 31st August 2022
Only applications of shortlisted candidates will be acknowledged