Job Opportunity for Project Director – Digital Equalizer – Deep Shala at American India Foundation in Gandhinagar

Organization’s background:

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 12.9 million lives across 35 states and Union Territories of India. Learn more at www.AIF.org.

Program Background:

Digital Equalizer is AIF’s flagship education program. Since its inception in 2004, the Program has empowered 5.4 million children with interactive STEM experiences, trained 182,025 teachers in STEM pedagogy and transformed 24,471 schools across 35 states and union territories of the country. DE Program utilizes technology to bridge the educational and digital divide in India by transforming under-resourced government schools into dynamic places to teach and learn through collaborative, project-based learning and building 21st century skills amongst students especially girls.

About the Project – Deep Shaala:

– With a belief that a high-quality education can drive improved economic outcomes, in partnership with AIF, Samvid Ventures launched DEEP Shaala (DS) to bridge the digital divide that has plagued underserved communities across India, specifically addressing its impact on middle and high school education.

– Currently focused on rural areas in Gujarat state, DS will bring digital tools and ways of learning to underserved students with a program that offers three core components: provision of devices to enable tech-based learning and the required infrastructure to support it, best-in-class content creation of learning materials, and rigorous teacher training to ensure high adoption and maximize the value of the equipment and content provided.

– The Project Head will be responsible for executing the pilot, and then scaling this unique and impactful program, changing the trajectories for middle and high school students across Gujarat.

– American India Foundation (AIF) is our partner in delivering this program. The Project will be an employee of AIF with regular touchpoints with Samvid Ventures’ US-based staff.

Key Responsibilities:

– The Project Director will lead the project across diverse aspects with the core responsibilities of managing a detailed pilot and an ambitious scale-up while bringing practices of continuous improvement to all aspects of programming. Specific responsibilities will include, but not limited to:

– Project strategy: Understand the AIF-SV objectives in designing this program and ensure these are met and exceeded through regularly revisiting strategy.

– Must ensure any new data and learnings are informing its shape; continue to build on one’s own as well as teams’ knowledge of the space through desk research, conversations with experts and other field-based work; ensure performance metrics fully capture and continue to line up with strategic priorities.

– Plan revise, adapt and operationalize activities that enhance student experience and learning. Identifies best practices in the field and seeks opportunities to leverage them through replication and/or refinement.

Project delivery: Closely manage execution in every aspect of project delivery, including device procurement and delivery, understanding the tech stack and ensuring it is scalable, school and teacher selection, content creation and dissemination, ongoing content sharing and student learning outcomes, meticulous Project tracking and evaluation efforts through smart, upfront and ongoing data collection, and continuously identifying opportunities for improvement.

– Recruit, motivate and retain high quality Project field team with the help of HR in line with the AIF India’s policies and procedures. Responsible for capacity building and mentoring of the DE team.

Project management : Demonstrate good governance within program delivery and financial management, ensuring that all systems and controls are in place and followed to allow accurate reporting, cost effectiveness.

– Responsible for corrective and proactive actions where needed as a result of the monitoring and evaluation process of the DEEP Shaala program and ensure appropriate and timely communication to DE Head of Operations and also other key stakeholders of the program

– Project communication and reporting: Create a workflow plan against the approved program deliverables and monitor the program progress and its timely monthly reporting to AIF Operational team and also maintain/share the progress updates – Programmatic & Utilization / action plan for the coming months to the SV Steering Committee.

– Plan monthly and Quarterly monitor reviews of the programs to ensure smooth progress. Directing the preparation and maintenance of reports as are necessary to track project for SV Steering Committee.

Stakeholder management: Work smartly and effectively with a range of diverse stakeholders- AIF (Internal and External). This will include management of the project’s Steering Committee, external stakeholders including local government officials at the district/block level and along with regional manager at state level, vendors and IIT-B, and SV board members.

– Authentically and meaningfully engage with a range of other local project and program partners critical to its delivery and success.

Qualifications: Bachelor’s degree; advanced degree preferred

Work Experience:

– 12-15+ years, preferably with a mix of private and social sector experience; 5+ years’ experience in education; some work experience in India (2+ years desired, ideally in a rural setting)

– Proven successful skill set in the executing conceptual, operational strategic and scalable project/s

– Outstanding partnership skills: Has experience in coordinating and delivering projects that require multiple stakeholders and/or organizations, experience establishing roles/responsibilities and holding internal/external stakeholders accountable

– Comfort with edtech: can work with with internal and external stakeholders to evaluate hardware and software technical requirements for max. efficiency and scale up and operationalize

– Excellent execution skills: Can easily work with data, build workplans, assemble and deliver high-quality presentation materials, communicate crisply with leadership and board. Understands how to “get things done” within the context of AIF.

– Exceptional problem-solving skills: Is able to easily foresee and define problems and break them into smaller questions; takes initiative in generating ideas and solutions; creates and applies frameworks to problem-solving; anticipates and names risks

– Strong strategic thinker: Structures thoughts in a logical fashion and can communicate takeaways in a clear and concise manner

– Very strong command of Hindi and/or Gujarati