Madhi Foundation Hiring For Madhi Foundation – Associate Director – State Reform at Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India Full Time

About Madhi

Madhi Foundation was established in 2016 as a non-profit organization committed to the cause of bridging the equity gap in education for children across India. The Foundation draws its inspiration from the Tamil proverb, “Destiny can be conquered with intellect (Madhi)”. Madhi Foundation specifically works to solve the foundational learning crisis in India. Our vision, “Foundational Learning First, so every child is set up for success”, guides our every action and gives our work the purpose and direction it needs.

What We Do

Madhi works closely with the Tamil Nadu School Education Department to conceptualise and implement large scale quality improvement programmes in Tamil Nadu’s government schools. Over the course of the next 5 years Madhi will strengthen its existing programmes in the state (as well as undertake new programmes) with the singular aim of ensuring transformative improvement in the quality of school education in Tamil Nadu and beyond.

Ennum Ezhuthum: We are currently also working as the ‘Chief Management Partner’ for Tamil Nadu’s official Foundational Learning Mission, The ‘Ennum Ezhuthum Mission’ – a Rs. 500 Cr Mission of national and regional importance aimed at universalising foundational learning for all children in Tamil Nadu’s 37,000 government schools.

Enjoy English: Enjoy English is a tech-based product-service offering aimed at improving foundational English among children from low-exposure to English contexts. It is one of a kind idea that adopts an oracy first approach to language learning which is different from most programmes that adopt a subject teaching approach to English learning.

Communities Enabling Foundational Learning (CEFL): CEFL aims to equip the parents with the knowledge, skills and tools to understand the quality of foundational education their children receive in public schools and in turn, start advocating for improving the quality of education with stakeholders such as teachers, administrators and local political leaders. We support parents to establish peer groups and networks of parents and community members to support each other towards educating their child and collectively demand for the same.

What is the work culture at Madhi like?

The work culture at Madhi is built both organically and inorganically. We articulate our core values and reinforce them through actions consistently. Team members imbibe Madhi’s values and help grow the culture. Our core values (Mission obsession, Empathy, Resilience, Integrity, Inquiry) form the basis of our actions, policy and interactions. Madhi nurtures a collaborative work culture where individual growth and team success go hand in hand.

Given the nature of our work (our close partnership with the government) we often realise that we work with partners who espouse a work culture that is vastly different from ours which can sometimes create a sense of cultural dissonance. This is not something we are able to change and we expect team members to join us knowing full well that when working with critical partners and stakeholders there would certainly arise a need to adapt and accept the differences and the challenges that come from working in such an environment. We have been fortunate to find team members over the years who have joined us and helped build a strong and purposeful culture and despite our rapid growth we have been able to sustain our culture over time.

Your team (State Reform)

The State Reform sub-vertical comprises four teams: Ennum Ezhuthum (State team), Ennum Ezhuthum (District team), Public Libraries Management and Assessment Cell. These teams are a multifaceted group; comprising curriculum leads, instructional design specialists, project managers and product managers all of whom prize dynamism and versatility in their approach to work. The sub-vertical works closely with the two other sub-verticals namely “Programme Design & Delivery” and “Data & Technology” counterparts to ensure that we are able to deliver high quality projects to all our stakeholders and learn from our implementation to iteratively improve the effectiveness of the programmes.

The State Reform team’s core focus is to advocate and build momentum for tried and tested models of intervention, support the state to develop high quality materials and training modules to ensure effective implementation to attain Foundational Learning at scale. The team comprises generalists who go above and beyond to ensure that the public service delivery of the projects is effective and efficient. All Madhi’s teams work together seamlessly to make magic happen day after day, doing whatever it takes to take us closer to the vision of reimagining school systems to eliminate the foundational learning crisis in India.

About The Role

You will be leading an exciting role, with pan-project visibility and oversight. You will be working on building strategy to deliver impactful programmes to achieve the organisation’s vision and mission in partnership with the Government. You would lead a highly skilled, energetic and multifaceted team who excel in curricular development, training, field work, and work towards Government adoption of Madhi’s programmes in Tamil Nadu.

The challenges you will help solve in this role

• Addressing the unique challenges that the public education space faces.
• Planning and implementing projects applying various permutations and combinations that ultimately address the foundational learning challenges
• Contribute purposefully to the growing body of knowledge on what works and what doesn’t work to improve last mile educational outcomes for children, through the public sector delivery; in particular- by contextualising findings to the Indian context.
• We are an outcome-driven organisation and we do not obsess over clocking in and clocking out. – As the sub-vertical head, you will be responsible to identify ways in which we can hold your team accountable to a high bar of excellence with a singular focus on outcomes by setting up systems that let us keep our eye on the ball at all times.

The Job Description

Below is an indicative set of responsibilities you will be required to lead as part of your role. We believe that a job description is best created collaboratively where the individual joining the team and the senior leadership team together define the role in greater detail so it reflects your aspirations and ambitions as much as it does the organisation’s needs. A detailed description can be jointly created once the selection process has been completed and you have accepted our offer of employment.

In This Role, Some Of Your Responsibilities Will Leadership

• Operate with a great sense of ownership and urgency and own all decisions taken by the State Reform team
• Set the vision for the programme and thought partner with the Leadership (Co-founders) team to drive the organisational vision
• Be responsible for creating the resource and staff projections for the successful implementation of the programme
• Set and achieve goals for the sub-vertical and support the senior managers of all the domains and teams to ensure that all goals are met successfully
• Be a part of Madhi’s Organisational Strategy team and contribute to decision making that impacts organisational direction and impact
• Lead or support all report and brief writing processes specifically when related to State Reform sub-vertical and generally related to organisational communication

Programme Monitoring

• Critically analyse the impact of the programme on an ongoing basis and look for ways to strengthen programmatic components for greater impact
• Guide the team to carry out extensive research in FL and ensure all programmatic decisions are rooted in strong and proven research principles
• Collaborate with the MEL team at Madhi to identify impact metrics, monitor and evaluate the impact of the program – this may include but is not limited to developing survey instruments, evaluation plans and executing the MEL plan with the support from other sub-verticals at Madhi
• Ensure that the project deliverables meets Madhi’s and state’s quality standards

Team Management

• Manage a highly skilled and motivated team and constantly strive to help them grow and realise their potential
• Ensure all team management structures are followed diligently and personalise support as and when required
• Support the Senior Managers of each project team to create a vision and set goals for their respective teams, organise work streams effectively and ensure every team member works towards collective and individual goals
• Support the Senior Managers to create detailed project plans for their respective verticals and ensure the project strategy and plans are robust, comprehensive and in alignment with organisational strategy
• Support the Senior Managers to troubleshoot issues from time to time and create strong support structures that improve efficiency and productivity and help a highly diverse team actualize their potential
• Establish systems and processes to capture learnings from implementation and help the team make incremental changes to the programme to improve process and impact outcomes

Stakeholder Management

• Lead the strategic partnership effort with the Government to ensure Madhi’s continued partnership with the state
• Represent Madhi in external meetings and events and articulate Madhi’s project vision in a compelling manner

You Will Thrive In This Role If You

• Demonstrate the highest degree of integrity throughout all activities and are obsessed with making learning impactful for the last mile child
• Have prior experience of creating strategic, data-driven policy advocacy based on data analysis from field inputs; are comfortable dealing with both quantitative and qualitative data
• Have proven planning skills and take pride in seeing projects through to completion
• Can manage and resolve conflicts on an everyday basis
• Can diplomatically communicate insights from and action required on data which can, at times, be dispiriting
• Are able to problem-solve from first principles, since much of what we do hasn’t been done before
• Are highly planned, organised, methodical, meticulous and detail oriented
• Thrive in a deadline oriented environment in creating collaterals for external stakeholders
• Have excellent stakeholder management skills, especially within a public sector setting
• Have an entrepreneurial zest to own and deliver

Prerequisites Include

• At least 10 – 12 years of work experience with a minimum of 4 – 5 years of people management and project management experience
• A Degree in a relevant subject; qualifications in Education would be an added advantage
• Experience in the education/development sector is mandatory
• Excellent knowledge of MS Office, G Suite, Digital Survey Tools and Data Visualisation Tools
• Excellent written communication and report writing skills in English
• Ability and willingness to work in a startup non-profit environment

This role will report to: Co-Founder, Head of Programmes

Location: Chennai, Tamil Nadu

Please note: You will be expected to bring your own laptop with updated software (MS Office 2016)

Remuneration: INR 17 LPA to INR 20 LPA

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