Set up Officer at Lively Mind

Lively Minds, an award-winning charity, is hiring to support our ambitious and exciting Early Childhood Development programme in Ghana and Uganda.

Job Description

Lively Minds in Ghana is recruiting two Set-up Officers to join our busy implementation team.   ​

The Set-up Officer is a key role in ensuring the success of our over-all programme. The Set-up Officer will work closely with Ghana Education Service (GES) District staff and teachers across about 60 districts that our programme operates, to ensure our activities are of high quality and set-up for long-term success.

To do this, the Set-Up Officers will coach and guide GES staff. They 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 district to the District Liaise Officers. Additionally, the Set-up Officers will need to produce reports of activities and share with Set-up Coordinators for ongoing reporting, as well as identifying and reporting compliance issues.

​The Set-up Officer will be given a high level of responsibility to deal directly with GES and manage government relationships. They will be expected to closely monitor district performance and support the District teams to handle any issues, such as lateness and motivation, with diplomacy.

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

Main duties and responsibilities

Facilitate set-up activities

• Facilitate set-up activities in 1-2 districts each academic term, including back-toback, training-of-trainers (ToT) workshops.
• Work as part of a team with colleagues and stakeholders to prepare for and deliver high-quality set-up activities.
• Proactively identify and accurately report risks to your team, Set-up Coordinators  and Set-up Manager and support and implement problem-solving.
• Feedback on lessons learned and suggest improvements in set-up lesson plans.

Support wider implementation

• Support the wider organisational operations where required – including monitoring top-up workshops, play schemes, and parenting workshops, radio coaching calls.

For a detailed understanding of the role and person criteria, please see the Job Description on our website: www.livelyminds.org

Required Skills or Experience

You may be assigned any other responsibility in agreement with your line manager, in contribution to Lively Minds work and in recognition of your experience and skills. It is therefore expected for staff to be flexible and willing to contribute to the work of the wider team.

To succeed in this role, you must be:

• 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 travel budgets.

Essential Experience and Skills

• Minimum qualification: Degree or Higher Education Diploma in early childhood or other relevant subject.
• 2+ 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.

Desirable Experience and Skills

• Experience of working with GES (or other government departments) and other education stakeholders/organisations
• Experience of working for an NGO.
• Experience of community mobilisation or sensitisation work.

You will be expected to perform against the Lively Minds Competencies.