Women’s Program Manager at LivelyHoods

About the Role

This is a new role for the organization, as we expand the focus of our training and support program to cater more specifically to the needs of women in urban and peri-urban communities across Kenya. The Women’s Programs Manager will effectively set up and monitor the integration of women’s-specific programming in our ongoing sales agent training model, and work closely with an existing team of training, management and support staff to boost the sales performance of women across the organisation.

As a Women’s Program Manager, you will implement, monitor and oversee LivelyHoods’ Women Empowerment Program, and engage in organization-wide monitoring and evaluation and program design. You will train our in-house trainers and monitor the initial training sessions (1-month training) in coordination with the Training Programs Manager. You will initially deliver, and then manage, ongoing mentoring to our female Sales Agents across all of our branches, engaging external mentors as coaches.

You will be in charge of evaluating LivelyHoods’ impact, overseeing data collection and conducting thorough analysis for external reporting to partners and donors, and also for internal evaluation. You will also be involved in applying to additional external funding for the continuation and expansion of the women’s empowerment program, in conjunction with the Director of Development.

Key responsibilities will include:

Training of trainers and monitoring the initial training sessions:

• Delivering the women’s empowerment training to our current trainers. This course consists of life and business skills taught by our team of in-house trainers during a 1-month interactive training of our new Sales Agents.
• The training includes life skills, business skills, sales and marketing, and effective communications, decision-making and self-agency.
• The training methodology is based on;
  • Highly participative sessions: 50% of the time is dedicated to role plays, games and theater activities;
  • Team-building exercises and Energizers;
  • Individual involvement of trainees, who will be asked to apply the lessons learned in their day-to-day lives;

Delivering and managing ongoing mentoring to female Sales Agents:

• Recruitment, training and management of local business coaches. They could, for example, be local female professionals who wish to have experience in training and coaching. Delivering recap training sessions in our local branches for existing Sales Agents, based on the contents of the one-month training;
• Organizing group outings/events for female sales agents as part of the ongoing mentoring.

Evaluating LivelyHoods’ impact:

• Management and oversight of the organization’s Monitoring and Evaluation plan, and of the women’s program’s objectives and outcomes;
• Overseeing baseline and endline of quality of life improvement of sales agents, carried out by field staff;
• Story collection as part of our ongoing impact assessment
• Consolidation of the impact framework, and introduction of new ways to express the organization’s impact as defined by the framework;
• Providing relevant reporting to the different funders and donors, in collaboration with the Director of Development;
• Suggesting and coordinating any changes to the program that might be necessary as a result of internal monitoring and evaluation.

Applying to women empowerment fundings, in coordination with the Director of Development:

• Sourcing and applying to women empowerment-based fundings, in conjunction with the Director of Development. This will involve grantwriting, prospecting and data collection relevant to different donor demands, with the aim of securing the ongoing funding necessary for the continuation of the women’s program;
• Promoting LivelyHoods as a women empowerment organization during public relations events, where necessary. This may involve public speaking, networking or representation at sector-relevant conference, seminars or gatherings.

Who we’re looking for:

Required

• As training and support will be provided primarily to women, and involve some peer-to-peer interaction and confidence-building, we are looking for a mature female candidate with empathy and people skills.
• You have experience as a coach or mentor;
• You are confident in performing in front of a crowd, and have some experience in theatre, performance or animation;
• You have good knowledge/background of the business world, as you will be teaching basics of business skills and be giving useful advices to women’s businesses;
• You have previous experience in Project Monitoring and Evaluation and are comfortable working with multi-layer logframes, data sets and impact analysis;
• Fundraising experience, in the shape of proposal writing and budget conception, as well as report writing for internal purposes and external donor reporting
• Extremely comfortable with office suite (Excel, Word, PPT), data analysis and manipulation
• Experience conceiving and working with surveys and questionnaires for data collection
• You have proficient speaking-skills in both English and Swahili;
• You have completed higher education, an undergraduate degree is required;
• You are locally based in Nairobi, but are available for nationwide travel on a needs basis, to work with our branches across the country. On occasions this may be for several days at a time;
• You are available for full-time employment, with some flexi-time to work on a weekend on a needs basis.

Preferred

• You have a grasp of psychology, and preferably exposure to women’s psychology;
• Experience with Salesforce or a similar data management system;
• Experience managing a team of trainers, mentors or field officers on a similar women-focused program;
• Experience of sales and/or management of sales people.

You would be a good fit with our organizational culture if: 

• You want to serve Kenyan women;
• You have a passion for social change through individual empowerment;
• You have strong public and individual communication skills, with a high degree of empathy;
• You pursue learning outcomes for yourself and your team on every occasion, and pride yourself on being flexible and adaptable to changing circumstances;
• You are comfortable in varying social and professional settings, alternating between interacting with under-educated women in slums, and high-level stakeholder meetings with institutional representatives.
• You are looking to build something from scratch that will be sustainable, with a deep, meaningful impact and business-driven goals;
• You are interested in social entrepreneurship as a way to combine impact and revenue generation in the most effective way.

Why work with us? 

• Our work is very rewarding – you see lives changing before your eyes!
• As Women’s Program Manager, you have a high level of ownership and responsibility – we will empower over 400 women each year thanks to this program. The role has a fulfilling level of autonomy: you can dream something into existence and implement it.
• We are a close-knit and committed team.
• We are growing fast, and sometimes we have to run to catch up with ourselves, so there’s always something to look forward to.
• We’re not afraid to innovate, and move quickly in tackling issues when we identify them, so you can have a major impact on the direction of the organization, and directly lead change.

Other information

The position is based in our Nairobi office (Kawangware) and we would strongly prefer a Kenyan citizen for this role. We are looking for candidates who are ready to commit to a minimum of 2-3 years. There is a six-month probation period and we will agree on performance and learning objectives as well as remuneration package, in line with experience. We are ideally looking for a candidate ready to start full-time in November.