Senior Program Manager, Policy and Partnerships at Educate!

About Educate!

Educate! prepares youth in Africa with the skills to succeed in today’s economy.
We tackle youth unemployment by partnering with youth, schools, and governments to design and deliver solutions that equip young people in Africa with the skills to attain further education, overcome gender inequities, start businesses, get jobs, and drive development in their communities. Our goal is to design skills-based education and employment solutions which impact youth life outcomes sustainably and at scale.
In 2019, we partnered with the governments of Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya and measurably impacted over 46,000 youth in and out of schools while reaching 470,000 learners more broadly, making us the biggest youth skills providers in East Africa. Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve pivoted to create and deploy a distance learning model based on our proven in-school experience and reached over 100,000 students by October 2020. Read here to learn more about Educate!’s distance learning model.
Two rigorous external evaluations of our flagship in-school model, including a randomized controlled trial, found that towards the end of secondary school, participants of our program earn nearly double the income of their peers. A follow-up RCT found that four years later, youth achieve strong and lasting shifts in skills, coupled with significant improvements in education and gender equity-related outcomes, especially young women. Our graduates change their lives and their communities, such as Daniel who opened a rural health clinic in his community employing two people and conducting about 350 checkups per month.
Educate! supports governments with integrating skills-based curriculum nationally. This includes partnering with Uganda’s government to integrate curriculum and a Student Business Club structure into Uganda's entrepreneurship course nationally and serving as a technical advisor to both Rwanda and Kenya on national education reforms.
Educate! is a non-profit social enterprise with over 150 staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We have been backed by top foundations such as MasterCard, Big Bang Philanthropy, Echoing Green, Ashoka and Global Innovation Fund. Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize (and was featured in a video), a 2015 WISE Award, and was highlighted by Bill Gates, in the World Bank’s S4YE's Impact Portfolio, an Al Jazeera documentary, Forbes 30 under 30, and The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies in their global scaling education learning initiative. Educate! was also selected by the UN’s Generation Unlimited as 1 of 20 innovative youth solutions and by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as a Goalkeepers Accelerator.

Educate!'s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year.

Performance Objectives

• Project Management/Technical Design Coordination
• Coordinate all technical design workshops and other processes with government partners
• Work collaboratively with other functions within Educate! to drive successful project implementation
• Ensure quality and consistency of all technical and programming activities and events
• Develop and implement risk and mitigation strategies
• End to end project management of all activities

Coordination and Administration

End to end project administration including budgeting, event coordination and reporting
Partnership Strategy

• Identify and take advantage of immediate and long-term opportunities in a way that positions our organization as a credible partner, innovator and leader in the education sector
• Create and maintain a consistent sourcing pipeline and support negotiations with all partners
• Partnerships Building
• Align Educate! and government priorities to build and maintain mutually beneficial partnerships
• Represent Educate! and drive strategies that enhance the organization’s brand

Core competencies

• Build strategic partnerships and relationships
• Be open to frequent change
• Work independently and with minimal supervision
• High level of ownership and accountability
• Thrive in a constantly changing and challenging environment
• Control and/or reduce operating expenses
• Promote an efficient culture
• Drive process innovation
• Enhance product and/or service quality
• Able to take calculated risks

Qualifications

• M.B.A or a Masters' Degree in Policy, Education or related field
• 7 -10 years in a similar role in different sectors with at least 3 years of demonstrable experience leading teams
• Experience managing complex projects or programs
• Exposure to youth entrepreneurship building programs is an added advantage
• Education system experience is an added advantage
• A good fit with our Five Cultural Tenets (see “What is Educate! About?” Below; learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here.
• Nairobi-based Kenya citizen