High School Counselling and Mentoring Lead at Hatua Likoni

Responsibilities for the High School Counselling and Mentoring Lead Job

Counselling and guidance of our students:

• Instilling our organizational values and mould leadership behaviours in the students through one on one and group interactions
• Giving emotional support to the students in moments of personal crisis
• Closely working with the scholarship coordinator to address academic issues
• Keeping all stakeholders informed of arising issues and recommending course of action to the team
• Pointing students to other support options in cases where we can’t support in-house
• Ensuring confidentiality when handling personal issues

Coordination of the holiday mentoring program:

• Curriculum design; Planning our programmes, the learning objectives and how to achieve them
• Conducting desk research and developing presentations and trainings
• Coming up with creative ways of strengthening values and unleashing leadership potential in the students
• Identifying and bringing on board relevant speakers (liaising with mentors database)

Coordinating our 8-month gap year program:

• Developing the curriculum which the gap year students will use to teach at secondary schools, constantly improving the life skills program
• Enabling all gap year students are effective peer mentors by organizing and running train the trainer seminars
• Liaising with schools to schedule our visits
• Quality assurance of the program and ensuring learning outcomes for our gap year students and the trained audience

Helping students plan for tertiary education:

• One-on-one meetings with gap year students during university admission period e.g. advising on how to fill out KUCCPS forms
• Run the university orientation week e.g. an education event around university life
• Hand over all students to the person in charge of university student mentorship

Supporting in family strengthening:

• One on one work with parents where relevant
• Planning and conducting afternoon events covering relevant topics (e.g. monitoring student performance, health, improving your house, financial management etc)

High School Counselling and Mentoring Lead Job Qualifications

• You are highly passionate about the youth and have strong commitment to dealing with all types of challenges they encounter
• You are able to build strong rapport and trusted relationships with students at high school age. You know how to balance between being warm and friendly while setting clear expectations
• You will play a parental role to over one hundred students, so vast experience in handling adolescent youth and a mature character are required
• You are empathetic and a great listener
• You have the ability to influence
• You have a community engagement mindset
• You have vast experience in designing and running trainings
• You are a role model in your community – you will stand for our values to parents and students
• You have at least two to three years experience in counselling, especially in the adolescence stage
• You have worked with low-income youth before
• You have experience in holding training and facilitation of workshops
• You hold relevant degrees, for example a diploma in psychology and/or counselling
• Ability in data tracking

You have the cultural fit to work with the team at Hatua Likoni, if

• You are 100% values driven and you want to instil strong values in the next generation
• You enjoy working with and in the community
• You are great team player, people talk about you being helpful and collaborative
• You are able to work independently and bring results in an unstructured environment
• You enjoy diversity and you are generally optimistic about the future

Why work with us?

• We get a lot of fulfilment by working with underprivileged youth and seeing them transform their lives over the 9 years they engage closely with us. If you enjoy building deep emotional connections and seeing the impact of your work, this job is for you
• Our team has a deep sense of ownership over the organization. Everyone has the chance to take a leadership role and contribute to the organization’s growth
• Build interesting networks
• We believe in personal growth and you will have a lot of opportunity for career development as the organization grows
• We have a sense of family in the team and there is some level of flexibility around working hours

Other information

The successful candidate will start in February 2017. You will be based in Mombasa, and work in our Likoni office. You should be ready to commit to this role for at least two years. We’ll arrange a 3-month probation period with learning and delivery objectives.