Job Location: Kitale, Kenya
Contract: Full time, 2 years with opportunity to extend.
Reports to: Senior Innovations Manager
ABOUT THE JOB:
Village Enterprise is seeking a candidate who is innovative, solution oriented and creative to support the Innovations Team activities and Village Enterprise mission on ending extreme poverty.
The position holder involvement areas include; developing creative and innovative ideas around our Graduation Program; help in development of pilots by applying the key stages of Human Centered Design (Ideation, Piloting and Implementation); capacity training for Business Mentors and Field Coordinators and research and development of tools and strategies that ensure the organizations meets its goals.
JOB DESCRIPTION:
Core Program Support Responsibilities: 60%
- Participate in designing, adaptation; coordinate implementation, and appraise pilot projects by employing human centered design thinking approaches.
- Work with the field team to coordinate and periodically develop materials, plan and execute Business Mentor workshops.
- Coordinate with the help of the field team to guide Bi-weekly meetings within the offices of mandate, by introducing creative materials and making them more effective.
- Support new projects, ongoing projects and calendar activities like the Innovations Summit; on theme selection, planning and overall execution.
- Participate in developing materials, inviting external resource persons that would be used to transfer knowledge and bridge capacities of Business Mentors and Field coordinators.
- Participate in gathering of information and identifying sustainable partnerships on Financial Inclusion, Value Chain Development, Market Intelligence and linkages.
- Write reports and develop presentations on ongoing projects, keep the whole team informed and update the documents on the various storage platforms like Google drive, and Box e.t.c.
- Occasionally contribute to proposal development by keeping track of funding opportunities for the innovations teamwork and pass such opportunities to direct supervisor.
- Assist in the development, assessment of standard operating tools like the Training Manual, Mentoring Guides and any other that may be introduced.
- Participate in the development of training support materials like picture codes, charts and any other visual or audio aids.
- Any other innovations work or program support work that may be assigned to you.
Innovations and Cross-functionality Responsibilities: 40%
- Be an ardent ambassador and advocate on Innovations Teams work internally and externally if and when given the opportunity.
- Ensure synchronization of activities between the ACDs/RMs work plans and the Innovations teams work by communicating work plans and planned activities.
Communication and coordination of work
- Weekly check-ins with supervisor (Plan and structure effective One-on-one’s)
- Provide information on work plan on Google Work Plan sheet on a weekly basis.
- Participate and contribute effectively during the weekly Innovations Team meetings
- Prompt response to email communications/ report deadlines and any follow-ups as may be requested
Team Work and Interpersonal skills:
- Leverage on his/her interpersonal skills to ensure cohesiveness and teamwork.
- Coordinator will take the time to understand other Coordinator’s, Manager’s and Director’s projects and actively provide insightful input.
- Coordinator thinks of how to improve synergies on the team and improve workflow as a team
Management and Leadership:
- The Coordinator manages competing tasks and deadlines with openness and efficiency
- The Coordinator manages his/her own projects, including tracking their own deadlines and deliverables and executing next steps without needing to be reminded or prompted.
- Provides desired leadership and guidance, has personal initiative and is self-drive towards achieving organizations goals.
INNOVATIONS COORDINATOR DESIRED SKILLS
- Be a creative thinker with a natural knack towards developing projects and works that address the goals of the organization.
- Be a solution oriented individual, who is able to asses, analyze situations and come up with well thought out solutions.
- Detail oriented person, who strives to get in-depth understanding of pilots and projects through application of Human Centered Design Thinking methods.
- The educational background that has created a base of understanding to be applied in the role. This will be a combination of university level degree preferably in Project Management/Agribusiness/Entrepreneurship, Micro-Finance or Business Administration and Management.
- At least 3 years’ experience working in the Livelihoods development field, Value chains development, Market systems analysis, Market intelligence and linkages or rural micro-finance is a plus.