Job Opportunity for State Coordinator, Program Operations at Room to Read in Chhattisgarh

Position Overview:

The State Coordinator/ State Head is responsible for Room to Read’s operations in a geographic area, a state in this case. The State Coordinator/ State Head is primarily responsible for ensuring the timely and effective implementation of programs at the field office, including strategizing scale-up, engagement with the government, spending, hiring, local procurement, inventory management, distribution and logistical support. The position is required to take initiative for project management, improving work approaches, partnerships, selection of projects sites, and ensuring adequate staff to work at the field level. S/he will work to strengthen coordination and collaboration within teams and across all CO program teams, maintaining and ensuring constructive communication, building team morale within individual teams and contributing to a positive working environment. S/he will report to the Sr. Manager, Program Operations and will have various positions reporting to him/her. The State Coordinator/ State head directly manages the Literacy Program Officer, Gender Equality Girls’ Education Program (“GEGEP”) Program Officer and Admin & Finance personnel.

Roles and Responsibilities:

• System strengthening and system integration as part of larger scale-up efforts:
• Working closely with State officials in ensuring government system strengthening and institutionalization of RtR programs in the state
• Preparation of overall strategic plan, basis local context and RtR Vision plan 2025 for the respective state and continuously reviewing the same.
• Organizing various discussions/consultations with Government to work towards system strengthening.
• Building body of evidence that can push appropriate policy/practice changes backed by robust evidence.
• Support INCO Op’s in proposal development and country growth plan as needed. 

External Coordination, branding and Networking:

• Attends to donor affairs including hosting donor and project site visits in collaboration with programs staff.
• Develop and lead media advocacy plan for the state.
• Assist RtR communication team in promotion of RtR programs through active media liasioning in state in accordance with the strategy, policies and guidelines of RtR.
• Scanning of education landscape in the state and positioning RtR as a thought leader through strategic management.
• Take lead in dissemination of program results, sharing program report to government and other agencies in suggestions with OPS team.
• Meets regularly with local government representatives, NGO partners, school administrators and parent groups to represent RtR.
• Promotes and protects the reputation of Room to Read in external settings, ensuring that the organization’s experience and expertise is well communicated and consistently presented, and that we are looked upon as a professional Education organization. 

Management and Coordination:

• Ensures efficient and effective coordination across all elements of the Literacy Program and Girls’ Education Program in his/her region.
• Supervises and oversees the work of the field staff and is responsible for optimizing their productivity through effective management and leadership techniques (i.e., coaching/advising).
• Ensures staff are consistently complying and adhering to policies, procedures and guidelines articulated in the CO handbooks, and facilitates the dissemination of information to all staff members to promote transparency.
• Supports staff through consultation with CO-level technical team to regularly assess staff capacity building needs.
• Ensures the performance management process is well-planned and conducted in a timely for all field staff. This includes setting performance goals, conducting progress check-ins, providing feedback, conducting year-end appraisals, and making recommendations for staff development and career advancement.
• Collaborates with Human Resources to handle recruitment and training of staff according to need.
• Leads and facilitates field staff in bi-weekly or monthly meetings to review progress against plans, find solutions to problems, share lessons learned, exchange expertise across programs, and to motivate and encourage teamwork.
• Ensures that field-staff are aware of and understand the programs’ goals and objectives, working approaches and methodology, and have all necessary information related to annual plans, targets, and implementation calendars.
• Conducts regular field visits to monitor and verify the programs’ progress and impact, understand the challenges and needs of stakeholders (e.g., RtR staff, Social Mobilizers, Field Facilitators, communities, children, etc…), and suggest appropriate solutions.
• Develop and implement plans for on-line material development in consultation with Country office as per the state specific context.
• Perform other tasks as assigned by the Sr. Manager – Operations, Director and Country Management Team. 

Financial management:

• Supervises fund disbursement, reviews and approves the field monthly and quarterly financial expenses in accordance with financial and purchasing policy and procedures.
• Timely submission of Cash forecast, booking of monthly bills and variance tracker
• Monthly tracking of all expense vis-à-vis the budgets and flagging any deviations to concerned person.
• Coordinates the timely completion of annual planning and budgeting.
• Ensuring full utilisation of respective budgets as per the Financial guidelines.
• Co-ordinate and answer any audit queries for the state. 

Reporting and Documentation:

• Develops high quality quarterly report for distributing to partners, if applicable.
• Prepares high quality monthly and quarterly donor programmatic reports, coordinate with
  concerned Program, Finance and OP’s department in INCO for finalizing and sharing the report on time.
• Ensuring high level of data quality for all reporting purposes.
• Preparation of appropriate case studies for submission to donors/communication team.  

Percentages of work (task) of State Coordinator:

• System Integration and strengthening: Thirty Percent
• Management and Coordination: Thirty Five Percent
• Financial Management: Twenty Five percent.
• Monitoring, Donor Visit and Govt visits: Two Percent.
• Training & Development: Eight Percent. 

Qualification & Experience:

• Master’s in  Management /education /Social Work or equivalent.
• Minimum 10 years of relevant & progressive experience and 2+ years of management experience is required.
• Demonstrated ability of strategic management.
• Prior experience of working with state government at scale.
• Awareness about issues in the domain of Literacy and Girls education.
• Strong oral and written communication skills.
• Experience of leading diversified team. 

Compensation:

Room to Read offers a competitive pay with excellent benefits. The non-monetary compensation includes a unique opportunity to be part of an innovative, meaningful, and rapidly growing organization that is changing transforming the lives of millions of children in developing countries on literacy and gender equality in education.

Room to read is a Child Safe Organization.

Location(s)

India – Chhattisgarh