Job Description
Job Title – Head/Associate Director/ Director - Programme – West Region
Location – Mumbai
About Magic Bus
Magic Bus India Foundation, founded in 1999 by Matthew Spacie, stands among the top five NGOs in India dedicated to education and skill development. Our organisation equips adolescents and young individuals with essential life skills and knowledge to thrive during the transition from childhood to livelihood.
Our mission is to create a world where young people break free from poverty, leading fulfilling and rewarding lives while making positive contributions to their communities. We achieve this by enabling adolescents to complete their secondary education, providing them with the necessary skills for employment, and connecting them to job market opportunities. Our target age group ranges from 12 to 24 years.
We operate two flagship programs: the Adolescent Programme and the Livelihood Programme.
1. In our Adolescent Programme, we prioritise the instillation of life skills and the enhancement of education. Through our network of connected schools operating in 234 districts across 24 states, we have positively impacted the lives of over 8 million adolescents, with an impressive 52% participation rate of girls.
2. The Livelihood Programme focuses on enhancing employability by providing specialised skills training and connecting young individuals to sustainable livelihood opportunities. Through our 115 Livelihood Centres and 1250 Colleges, we offer sector-specific training, job placements, and post-placement support. This programme, operational in 19 states, has achieved an impressive 60% participation rate among girls and has a cumulative outreach of 6,00,000 youth
The Role
The Head/ Associate Director is responsible for achieving high impact at scale, in improving the quality of lives of hundreds of thousands of children, adolescents and young people living in poverty through the childhood to livelihood journey.
Roles & Responsibilities
1. Strategic Leadership:
• Provide strategic leadership in positioning Magic Bus impact, its organisational mission and the manner it needs to located within the larger canvas of government or partner programmes to drive the childhood to livelihood agenda.
• Contribute to Magic Bus organisational vision, goals and the growth story in building credible evidence, process pathways for change and long term measurable impact on the ground
• As a member of the Senior Executive Team, you will make a leading contribution to the overall strategy and organizational development of Magic Bus as well as Lead and inspire volunteers and employees.
• Build and nurture government partnerships at state-level and district-level to ensure Magic Bus contributes to as well as influence the government's policy agenda and is a point of reference in the concerned states in the area of life skills education and empowerment of adolescents and young people.
2. Programme Management :
• Oversee the design and implement portfolio of high quality, well-managed, result-oriented and impactful programmes in line with the programme implementation plan in the region that brings about positive changes in the lives of children
• Ensure realization of Programme results as evidenced by the evaluations
• Institutionalize strong systems and processes to operationalize the region including program execution and automating the processes wherever appropriate for efficiency, enhanced quality and effectiveness
• Optimum budget utilization and minimum underspends while carrying out programme activities.
• Responsible for coordinating with other Regional and HO functions viz. Finance, HR, Procurement, Administration, M&E, Programme Design and Training for efficient, effective and impactful programme implementation
• Identify partners who can execute Magic Bus programmes on its behalf through their competence, can take Magic Bus programmes to the last mile while creating a larger purpose and impact in the region.
3. People Development:
• Build strong next level of leaders who can manage and execute their responsibilities independently and uphold Magic Bus culture
• Develop an eco-system that can collaborate, provide feedback to programme design team, thereby create deeper and wider impact in the region and enhance the design of Magic Bus programmes
• Team management for ensuring capacity building, productivity and effectiveness through timely communication and feedback.
4. Partnerships and Collaboration:
• Position MB as a thought leader in the education and livelihood space.
• Represent the organisation at various regional, national and international forums, conferences, and lead key discourse.
• Explore partnerships and collaboration with the various state and central government agencies in the region.
• Participate and represent MB at collaborative platforms with different NGOs, donors, employers and partners.
• Strengthen the existing partnership work through innovation and creative thinking.
• Recognise opportunities to sustain and scale the programme in collaboration with different stakeholders.
Education & Work experience
• PhD /Post graduate in Social work, Management, Economics or other social sciences
• 18 to 25 years of experience in driving large scale programme management.
Knowledge & Skills required
• Experience in driving large scale programmes, institutional partnerships, government
collaborations in the life skills and adolescent empowerment space.
• Ability to connect with key stakeholders that include donors, government and civil society
• Network & build relationships and generate fund for MB programmes
• Has an eye for detail and can systematize processes
• Commitment to results and demonstrates high resilience
• Communicates, has strong interpersonal relationship and can inspire across levels
• Delegates responsibilities and develops people to fulfill their responsibilities
Desirable
• Proven track record in Strategic Programme Management