Project Coordinator

About the Role:

The Project Coordinator plays a crucial role in guiding and mentoring the Program Officer and District Teachers to implement Quest Alliance s Future Skills curriculum. This support includes project management, monitoring, and assisting teachers in successfully implementing the Model school strategies, as well as other activities. The Project Coordinator also builds relationships with all district stakeholders and works closely with the training and content team. They must adhere to all the implementation processes and timelines communicated by the program team.

The Amazon Future Engineer project involves implementing a program where teachers are trained to implement a Future Skills curriculum on Artificial Intelligence and Future Careers. The Program Officer needs to make frequent visits to the schools to observe, motivate and give critical feedback to Teachers on the implementation of the session plans. Additionally, the PO also needs to maintain and inform the District Education Office officials about the progress of the program and help the Coordinator in compiling Funder reports every month.

Roles Responsibilities:

Project Management

• Ensure end-to-end project management of the implementation happening in 3 Districts (Srikakulam, Vizianagaram, Visakhapatnam) of the State along with donor reporting, implementation and team management
  

• Support in developing the state plan and ensure its operationalisation and achievement of goals with quality
  

• Ensure donor reporting happens as per timelines and with quality - capturing project learning and insights and making the report a tool for reflection for the donors
  

• Ensure financial forecasting is in place for the project in coordination with the Associate Program Manager and the spent plan is as per forecast (no underspent/overspent) with maximum focus on the key constituency when it comes to prioritizing spent decisions
  

• Support in financial management to ensure audit compliance, review of the monthly project spent report to check for consistency and discrepancies
  

• Ensure State reviews are streamlined with the thematic leads and other relevant stakeholders, along with the Associate Manager, and become spaces for reflections and deepening the synergy between org, program and state strategy, ensure data and qualitative insights are being used to drive reflection and deepen the strategic thinking
  

• Monthly field visits to interact with the learners, teachers, headmasters and district officials to gauge the effectiveness of the program from the stakeholder lens while also maintaining the relationships built with the stakeholders to leverage it for the project as needed
  

• Work closely with the Associate Manager to ensure overall alignment with the State Plan and strategy
  

• Ensure complete understanding of the Future Skills curriculum on Artificial Intelligence and Careers to be able to guide the ground-team accordingly and also to coordinate better with the Learning Experience (LE) team
  

• Ensure on-ground team members have their work plans in place for their visits and are documenting their insights in a systematic manner for the LE team to be able to review.
  

Advocacy

• Develop and sustain the relationship with the District Collector, District Education departments and other concerned/allied departments
  

• Identify appropriate stakeholders for program delivery as and when required
  

• Ensure that key staff at the district offices have a clear understanding of and regular involvement in the programs through monthly reports, joint visit plans and more
  

• Identify opportunities for joint activities with the government staff (e.g. join visits, shared workshops, etc)
  

• Work closely with the communication team to ensure that the project updates find a mention in the social media, have a social media calendar
  

• Lead and participate in all program events at the District and State to raise the profile of the organisation and make visible our work in the State
  

• Represent Quest Alliance in local and state forums and platforms
  

Relationship Management - Stakeholders

• Develop and sustain the relationship with the Government Education departments and other concerned departments
  

• Coordinate effective field visits for the donors to understand the progress of the program being implemented; this would include scheduling appointments with relevant district departments.
  

• Lead and participate in all program events to raise the profile of the organisation
  

• Represent Quest Alliance in local and state forums and platforms
  

• Ensure that key staff at the State and District Government have a clear understanding of and regular involvement in the programs
  

• Identify opportunities for joint activities with the government staff (e.g. shared workshops etc.)
  

• Support in sharing monthly reports with the relevant stakeholders
  

Team Management

• Ensure that all employees managed have clear performance objectives and development plans.
  

• Manage team members, ensuring that they are clear on the change they are contributing to and on their roles and responsibilities.
  

• Support, mentor and coach the team as part of their professional development and help them to be highly effective in their work.
  

• Ensure that team work together to share learning and to exchange skills
  

• Coordinate training and other capacity-building initiatives for staff as required
  

• Provide guidance and expertise to the Coordination team as required
  

• Ensure human resource policy and procedure is adhered to by team
  

• Ensure staff welfare with support from the People team
  

• Ensure that all your team members have a clear job description. performance objectives, development plans they receive performance reviews
  

• Support, mentor and coach the team as part of their professional development and help them to be highly effective in their work.
  

• Lead the recruitment, induction and onboarding of new member for your team you manage
  

• Ensure that the team works together to share learning and to exchange skills
  

Reporting

• Support the Monitoring and Review process with continuous validation by:
  

- Making monitoring field visits

- Documenting case studies

- Updating plans and reviews during L3 and/or Jira

- Ensuring data collection and quality on internal data collection tools

• Work together with ME Coordinator to track program progress based on the Monitoring and Evaluation framework
  

• Lead on reporting both internal and external, in accordance with the program ME framework and based on the regular reporting agreements of the project
  

• Ensure the baseline and endline for the project are completed and the insights are presented in the right State and District forums
  

• Ensure the monitoring tools are understood by the team and is used for reporting
  

• Ensure all the relevant data for the State is available on time and is also reported in a timely manner by the team and/or Teachers
  

• Submit all the relevant monitoring reports on time, especially the donor reports on a monthly basis within the agreed timelines
  

• Support review with Partners and participate actively in the discussion
  

Required Skills and Experience:

• Minimum 5-6 years of work experience in project implementation or school facilitation, and NGO sector, preferably in education Development sector.
  

• Interest in working with Government secondary school Teachers students.
  

• Willingness to learn and influence prevalent practices in the education ecosystem
  

• Excellent interpersonal, written and verbal communication skills in Telugu (Mandatory) and working knowledge of English.
  

• Willingness to travel within and outside of the District.
  

• Ability to train, build the capacity of, and manage relationships with new people.
  

• Ability to work independently as well as collaboratively with other teams.
  

• Ability to use technology and various virtual platforms like Google Hangout Meet, Zoom, WhatsApp, Google Classroom, Chatbot and other google suite applications.
  

• Excited about working with Teachers on Artificial Intelligence, 21st-century skills Computational thinking.
  

• Knowledge of artificial intelligence, hackathons, coding and the Ed-Tech tools would be an advantage and will be preferred.
  

Salary: The pay band for the position starts at Rs. 58,000/- per month (cost to company) ( The salary offered will be commensurate with the experience and expertise of the candidate)