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Job Title:    Set-up Officer

Organisation: Lively Minds

Duty Station:  Jinja, Uganda

Reports to: Programme Coordinator.

Compensation: 12,749,700 UGX gross per annum (1,062, 475 UGX gross per month). rising to 14,662,155 UGX, subject to performance. Then, any subsequent pay progression is based on performance.

About US:

Lively Minds is an award-winning NGO, working to get pre-schoolers in rural Ghana & Uganda school-ready. Since 2008, we have developed an innovative, behaviour-change programme that empowers marginalized, poorly-educated mothers to run educational ‘Play Schemes’ for pre-schoolers and to provide better home-based care, using local resources. The Lively Minds programme aims to improve school-readiness of rural kindergarten children, by training parents to provide practical, cost-free learning and developmental activities in the kindergarten and at home.

Job Summary:  The Set-up Officer is a key role in ensuring the success of the over-all programme. The Set-up Officer will work closely with the Set-up Coordinator, staff, Sub County Officials and Village Health Teams across all the Sub Counties where Lively Minds operates, to ensure activities are of high quality and set-up for long-term success. To do this, the Set-up Officer will coach and guide Sub County staff. He/she will deliver frequent structured trainings to set-up the programme. Once the set-up trainings are complete, they will hand-over the continuous co-ordination of each Sub County to the Sub County Liaise Officers. Additionally, the Set-up Officer will need to produce reports of activities and share with Set-up Coordinator for ongoing reporting, as well as identifying and reporting compliance issues.

He/she will closely monitor sub county performance and support the Sub County teams to handle any issues, such as lateness and motivation, with diplomacy.

The role requires regular travel and interaction with communities. Set-up Officer will be responsible for planning their own budgets and accounting for their expenditure in the field.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:  

Planning and developing training

• To support the head of content in developing high quality training activities (including Play Scheme set-up phase lesson plans, learning materials, support tools), that are tailored appropriately for the target user/audience.
• Fully participate in auditing games working closely with a Set-up Officers at office and with Liaison team at Sub County, generate and submit status reports to the Setup Coordinator for review and action planning.
• To work with the head of content during the Play Scheme set-up phase to adapt the training curriculum to improve scalability and cost-effectiveness, particularly by identifying ways that training can be incorporated into existing Government activities.
• To adopt a behavior-change approach. In particular, identifying desired behaviors; conducting needs assessments to identify knowledge gaps, attitude barriers and resource, financial and capacity limitations.
• Support the design of creative approaches to transfer key messages and motivate participants to take action; to identify ways to support and reinforce new behaviours and skills.
• To use project management techniques to ensure that preparation for all Play Scheme set-up phase activities is complete on time, that resources are used effectively and that risk mitigation plans are in place.
• To develop budgets for the set-up phase activities and submit them to the Set-up Coordinator on time for review.
• Submit accurate accountabilities for the resources used on a timely manner to the Set- up Coordinator.
• Make and submit activity, and monthly narrative reports highlighting key issues including but not limited to successes, challenges, action points, success stories, and lessons learned to the Set-up Coordinator on a timely manner.
• Submit weekly, monthly and quarterly workplans to the Set-up coordinator for review.

Delivery and quality control

• To prepare staff and SC teams to facilitate training activities.
• To facilitate training to the highest standard, in accordance with lesson plans and using effective communication techniques.
• To coach and support staff and SC teams to deliver high quality training recognizing and re-producing best practices, and managing any poor performance.
• To conduct field visits to supervise and observe the quality of training conducted by VHT, colleagues and SC teams during the Play Scheme set-up phase.
• To report any risks or successes that may impact on the programme quality and develop and share plans to meet those needs/opportunities, communicating and cooperating with fellow team members and stakeholders.
• To support the collection of data and evaluation of performance at during the set-up phase of the Play Scheme programme.
• Understanding, updating and acting upon Key Performance Indicator (KPI) information collected by yourself and colleagues.
• To maintain a database of all training materials so that templates can be reused and lessons learnt and incorporated.
• Proactively identify and accurately report risks to the team, and Set-up Coordinator and support and implement problem solving.

Sub County Team & Stakeholder Management

• To work with the team to ensure Sub County engagement and ownership over all elements of the programme, with a specific focus on training SC staff to set-up the Play Schemes successfully and deliver all required.
• To maintain and develop stakeholder relationships – including with community leaders, Local Government partners, other NGOs.

Support wider implementation

• Support the wider organisational operations where required – including monitoring top-up workshops, play schemes and parenting workshops, radio coaching calls.
• Work as part of a team with colleagues and stakeholders to prepare for and deliver high quality set-up activities.
• He/she shall be assigned any other responsibility in agreement with the line manager, in contribution to Lively Minds work and in recognition of her/his experience and skills. It is therefore, expected for staff to be flexible and willing to contribute to the work of the wider team.

Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

• The applicant must hold a Degree in Education, social sciences or other relevant subject.
• Two years of experience of facilitating and delivering training.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment by having energy and a “can do” attitude
• Excellent planning and organisation skills.
• Good interpersonal and communication skills with a flexible approach, enabling you to positively with a diverse range of stakeholders.
• Ability to coordinate, and engage large audiences.
• Experience of coaching and working with government stakeholders.
• Comfortable with frequent travel and overnight stays.
• Technically literate – good understanding of MS Word, Powerpoint and Excel. Able to adapt to and learn new tech systems easily.
• Energetic, self-motivated and confident.
• Skilled in community entry protocols and community mobilisation.
• Experienced in working with government partners.
• An excellent communicator, with strong interpersonal skills and the ability to interact with diverse groups.
• Highly organised, a good planner who is able to prepare your own work schedule.
• Skilled in the use of MS Word to prepare reports.
• Able to use basic MS Excel to prepare activity budgets.
• Fluent in Ugandan Lusoga (written and spoken)

Desirable experience and skills:

• Experience of working with government departments and other education stakeholders/organisations
• Experience of working for an NGO.
• Experience of community mobilisation or sensitisation work.
• Fluency in one or more of the following languages will be an added advantage: Luganda or Kiswahili

How to Apply:

All candidates should download the application form, Click Here, fill it and send it to jobs@livelyminds.org

Deadline: Sunday 5th December 2021 by 12:00 midnight EAT

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