Progamme Manager Jobs Future First Kenya

Progamme Manager Job at Future First Kenya
Future First Kenya is looking for an experienced Programme Manager to join our team in Nairobi to deliver our activities as part of a student financing programme – an exciting initiative being piloted for the first time in Kenya.
This is a dynamic and varied role and will involve designing and delivering a comprehensive programme of community building, to support academic success and create pathways to employment for the student financing programme student recipients. The Programme Manager will be based at our head office in Lavington, with regular travel to five partner universities in and around Nairobi.
What we do
Future First Kenya has been operation since 2013. It was started off the back of a global research study by Future First Global that analysed the current practice and potential for alumni networks in 9 countries. In Kenya, a national poll indicated that 78% of adults across Kenya would be willing to give back to their old school if asked but less than 1 % had done so. After a few years of trialling programmes, our experience and research shows that alumni are a vast, and largely untapped resource for institutional and career advancement. Alumni can be mobilized to support current students and inject financial and social capital in education institutions.
Alumni networks themselves provide professional networking platforms for career progression.
We have identified two main areas of intervention; training alumni leaders through the Alumni Leadership Programme and boosting the culture of giving back through an annual back to school campaign and an annual national alumni conference. To share a greater understanding of alumni value and to better engage with government on policies, we launched the Association of Alumni Communities in Kenya. The association seeks provide an infrastructure for growth of alumni communities and promote civic engagement in schools.
About the student financing programme
The student financing programme aims to pilot and scale a non-profit social lending fund dedicated to strengthening economic prosperity in Sub-Saharan Africa by providing affordable higher education loans to students, incentivising their academic success and creating pathways to gainful employment. Student financing programme’s lending will be directed towards youth from low and middle-income backgrounds who are currently unable to secure credit from conventional commercial banks and for whom bursaries and scholarships are not yet available – “the missing middle” of higher education finance.

Principal Responsibilities

Project Management

• Implement the student financing programme across five higher education institutions in Nairobi;
• Build and maintain an evaluation framework to support continual improvement of the programme;
• Line management responsibility for one Programme Officer;
• Budget management of events, staffing and travel;
• Financial and progress reporting lead to the Future First Global team in the UK;
• Design of quarterly work plans to deliver the programme to agreed timelines and milestones.

Community building and relationship management

• Build strong working relationships with all student financing programme recipients, partner organisations and institutions;
• Design and facilitate meetings, trainings, events and other activities with students;
• Implementation of an engagement strategy to ensure a high level of programme participation.

Training and facilitation

• Design and deliver training and activities for student financing programme participants from start to finish – including planning, logistics, facilitation and evaluation;
• Conduct a range of focus groups and informal feedback sessions with student financing programme recipients to feed into constant improvement of the programme;
• Coach and mentor student financing programme chapter student leadership and student financing programme ‘champions’.

Communication

• Set up and maintain regular contact with students via email and phone;
• Set up and maintain communication and engagement platforms;
• Writing, editing and designing engaging communications for student financing programme recipients and wider stakeholders;
• Writing, editing and designing a regular newsletter about the student financing programme.

Monitoring, reporting and evaluation

• Keep accurate records of events and activities, including attendance and learnings;
• Collect and analyse data on an ongoing basis from a range of sources;
• Support with quarterly reporting to D.Capital;
• Develop case studies for use in communications and monitoring

Person Requirements

• We understand that candidates may not have experience of every part of this programme. Most importantly, we are looking for someone who ‘gets’ what we are doing and can provide strong evidence of experience in community building and project management.

Essential Skills and Experience

• At least five years’ project management experience;
• Experience of working directly with young people;
• Open and honest approach to collaboration and reporting; two members of the team are overseas and it is essential that you will be able to work effectively with them.
• Relationship-building skills: experience of working effectively with a range of stakeholders;
• High levels of organisation, ideally with experience of setting up and maintaining reporting systems;
• Strong communication skills: ability to communicate effectively across a range of forums: from set-up of social media groups, to running focus groups with students, to drafting evaluation reports.
• Critical and analytical: the confidence to recognise and raise where the programme might not meet the desired outcome and to adjust and re-plan accordingly.

Desirable Skills and Experience

• Experience of working on projects involving universities and/or schools;
• Experience working with CRM systems;
• Excellent writing and research skills with a high attention to detail;
• Confidence in designing and delivering sessions to large groups of students;
• Experience of people management;
• The independence and confidence to make decisions and work day to day with minimal supervision;
• A willingness to travel around Nairobi regularly.

How to apply
Please send a copy of your CV (of no more than two pages) and a cover letter explaining why you think you are the right person for this role to info@futurefirst.co.ke, Your subject line for the email should be: Application to Programme Manager Role. Further, please follow this link to answer a few questions https://goo.gl/forms/7vOqGqCfYYidfJWS2, this will take about 30 minutes to do. The application deadline is Friday 26th January 2018.
Initial interviews will be taking place the week commencing Monday 29th January 2018. Preferred start date – between Monday 19th and Monday 26th February 2018.
Initially a 12 month contract with potential for extension.
For more information visit – www.futurefirstglobal.org