Associate, School and Community Relations – Teach For India

Teach For India is on a journey to reach an India free of poverty and filled with love by ending educational inequity in our country. Twelve years into our journey we are a movement of 3800 Alumni working at all levels of the education system, who are reaching 1 in 10 children across the country. These Alumni have graduated from our two-year Fellowship Program where they taught in under-resourced classrooms to put 32,000 low-income children on a different life path. Today, we have 970 Fellows and are the largest pipeline of driven, skilled talent into the educational ecosystem in India.

In 2022, we embark on Phase 4, our fourth strategic phase. We have a bold and ambitious ten-year journey ahead of us that aims to grow 50,000 leaders, who will work collectively, and with love, to transform the lives of 1 in 10 low-income children in our regions, through an education that unleashes the potential of self, others and India. In this decade, five key priorities will lead us to this vision.

• Strengthen our core Fellowship to build strong teacher leaders who provide an excellent and equitable education to our children and continue to do so beyond the Fellowship
• Scale our impact by strategically introducing additional Fellowships as alternative pathways for leadership development
• Match the Alumni of our programs at an intersection of their interests and the needs of the system and our children
• Advocate for key issues that impact educational equity, and engage 3.5% of the population in the movement for educational equity
• Act collectively with our Alumni to learn about and address key issues in our regions.
• Our work will only be completed when we have built a movement of leaders that is large enough to ensure that every child in India attains an excellent education.

We pride ourselves as being a passionate, idealistic, mission-driven team of individuals. We’re committed to learning and excellence in our roles, and to being deeply rooted in our core values.

What Teach For India Can Offer You

• The opportunity to be part of one of the most established and visionary movements in the education sector in India which is at a pivotal point in terms of expanding its scale and outreach across the nation and working with changemakers across the country.
• A challenging yet flexible workplace in which every individual employee’s Staff journey is tracked for excellence and leadership development.
• A work environment in which employees’ holistic well-being is a core priority, enabling people to be their best selves.
• Access to connections and resources from the global Teach For All network that includes partner organizations spanning 50+ countries across 6 continents.
• Remuneration that is competitive within the top quartile of the Indian NGO pay scales, and a benefits package that includes extensive medical insurance and maternity coverage for both parents.

Position Summary
The School and Community Relations Associate in Kolkata is responsible for managing school and community partnerships as well as supporting the Program team with Stakeholder Management in schools and communities. You will be responsible for setting a strong culture of problem-solving and collaboration amongst Fellows and Stakeholders and work closely with the Program team and Government Relations Manager to ensure win-win partnerships in schools and communities. You will also be actively working on our city priorities of ensuring a 30:1 student teacher ratio in all classrooms and Kolkata’s strategic expansion planning.

The opportunity – what’s in it for you?

A challenging yet flexible workplace in which every individual employee’s Staff journey is tracked for excellence and leadership development. A work environment in which employees’ holistic well-being is a core priority, enabling people to be their best selves.

Responsibilities
School Facing

• Design the city’s school placement strategy, effectively mapping high need areas/schools with city priorities with the Government Relations Manager. Support the Government Relations Manager at the institute for placement sessions and the workshops in the city.
• To identify new placement schools on yearly basis and ensure there is a healthy ratio among Government, Private and PPP schools
• Invest School Leaders through in-person meetings and existing feedback structures like HM (Headmaster) survey, HM Conference etc.
• Create a strong ecosystem of support and mutual accountability within and across school teams with the SPM and drive its implementation through the PMs
• Maintain the Fellow and School Placement Database of the city
• To create and maintain a database of NGOs and emergency contacts in and around the placement schools

Community Facing

• Design a year-long Community Engagement strategy for the city and drive implementation through Staff and Fellows
• Lead city-wide spaces to bring HMs, teachers and/or parents together
• Identify, build and share a database of initiatives/policies/schemes that could potentially benefit our partner schools, parents and children, in the areas of safety, health, and education
• Identify and build partnerships with other organizations in the city to support Fellows in the areas of child safety, inclusive education, health, and welfare etc.
• Create sustainable structures to gather inputs and feedback from parents and the community, to deepen our impact
• Provide COVID wellness: ration, health, and safety support for students and their families

Fellow Facing

• Coach and develop our School Team Leads to build and maintain relations with key stakeholders in school and community
• To support Fellows and Program Managers (PMs) in resolving concerns of the School Principals,
• Government bodies, communities, and parents of the students
• Partner with Fellows to drive parent engagement structures like parent-teacher meetings and community visits to develop a deeper understanding of our stakeholders
• Support PMs to develop and maintain relations between Fellows and school stakeholders
• Build, collate resources and know-how of best practices from within and outside TFI to resolve barriers in our children learning faced by school stakeholders (eg.: Safety, Health, etc)
• Support Fellows who undertake ‘Be the Change Projects’ (BTCPs) that focus on key elements of the school, like teacher training, school infrastructure, etc.

Additional Responsibilities

• Support in Recruitment, Selection, Matriculation based on interest and skills.
• Support at Training at Institute based on interest and skills.
• Support in planning and organizing city events like City Conferences, induction, mid-year retreats

Minimum Qualifications, Experiences and Expectations

• Graduate in any stream.
• At least 1-2 years of experience of relationship management, education change or communication at the grassroot level preferred
• Excellent communication skills – written and verbal in Hindi, Bengali and English
• Possess an excellent knowledge of Microsoft Office and Google products
• Balanced personality, who operates with empathy and solution-oriented approach
• Orientation for continuous learning based on execution experience and dialogue
• Invest stakeholders through effective and tactful communication
• Ability to work in unstructured and undefined environments and ability to multi-task and juggle multiple projects at the same time

Preferred Qualifications, Experiences and Expectations

• Experience working with stakeholders in low-income communities
• Ability to work with data to drive decisions
• Passion for and belief in the importance of mobilizing stakeholders to effect change
• Willingness to demonstrate high commitment towards the long term vision for the regional movement