Project Manager Strategic Support States, Gujarat

About Central Square Foundation:

Founded in 2012, Central Square Foundation (CSF) is a non-profit philanthropic foundation working on the vision of ensuring quality school education for all children in India. We are driven by our mission to transform the school education system with a focus on improving children's learning outcomes, especially in low-income communities.

Learn more about CSF on our website.

About the team:

Strategic Support States (SSS) team at Central Square Foundation assists the states in designing and implementing the respective state missions to ensure FLN learning outcomes for children. Spread across six states, the Project Management Units (PMUs) of the team work closely with the state bodies in co-ideating goals of the missions, identifying critical workstreams, setting indicators of success across the workstreams, and reviewing mission progress. Apart from these core activities, the SSS team also conducts action research projects and pilot context-specific programs to accelerate student learning.

Position Summary

CSF is recruiting for the position of Project Manager based in Dahod (Gujarat) to support the state FLN team in developing and supporting a holistic foundational learning programme. This role will cater to academic and governance workstreams and will require day-to-day interactions with government officials in the district.

Key Responsibilities

The Project Manager shall work closely with the District administration of Dahod district in creating and implementing detailed District Action Plan (DAP), collaborate with District Education Officers, District FLN Nodal Officers & district resource persons to enhance the processes and strengthen existing inputs of the FLN Mission, such as the use of teaching learning materials, effective teacher professional development & mentoring, dissemination of communication campaigns, and the effective monitoring systems as part of measuring outputs/outcomes.

Conduct small-scale pilot interventions (which are not part of the existing inputs) in the district to solve complex problems or problems specific to the district.

Align district-level strategies and interventions with the overarching goals and directives of the state FLN mission. Collaborate closely with the state team to ensure coherence and integration of efforts, sharing insights and progress updates regularly.

Other key responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

Providing efficiencies to implementation

Deeper and grassroot-level diagnostic of WHAT and WHY of the gaps and problem-solving

Ground-level feedback to the state

Design and/or execute district/mandal-level strategies/solutions

Build local capacities for adoption and usage

Conduct awareness campaigns/events on FLN across the schools/clusters/mandals/districts improving enabling conditions

Ensure state-level governance structures (like review meetings) cascade effectively and function well at the district level

Creating deeper stakeholder buy-ins and salience for prioritising FLN & becoming champions

Data monitoring and Progress check

Conduct field trials to get ground feedback on the monitoring system, and work closely with the State to fix the gaps

Ensure consistent data collection, develop and maintain the Management Information System (MIS), analyse data to generate insights, and drive actionable outcomes.

Improve data quality & reliability, including independent data collection on KPIs, and conduct pilot studies aimed at improving the same

Pilot Projects to test innovative models 

Implement pilot projects and test models for community/parental engagement

Implement pilot projects and test solutions on key challenges such as MGML

Work with District Admin. in the implementation of tech-based Continuous Professional Development

Design and rollout to modules for capacity building of stakeholders (teachers/ mentors/ parents)

Design and implement interventions that promote holistic development in children.

Documentation & Reporting

Prepare timely and accurate reports, documenting the program's progress, achievements, challenges, and financial utilization

Document the quantitative and qualitative impact/outcomes of every intervention at the district level

The Project Managers will execute projects to stabilize outputs across FLN workstreams with the goal to improve process KPIs and learning outcomes

Required Qualifications, Skills, and Abilities

Bachelors degree; a Masters degree preferred (in education, development studies, public policy, and social sciences)

Minimum 2 years of work experience, preferably in the education sector, demonstrating remarkable project delivery and stakeholder management

Prior experience working with state and district-level governance and institutional structures is highly desirable

Ability to undertake field travel (schools, clusters, tehsils) for at least 15 days in a month

Keen interest in the development/education sector

Fluent in both Gujarati and English with excellent written and oral communication skills

Knowledge and experience in project management, including large-scale program implementation with multiple delivery tracks and monitoring

Strong skills in stakeholder management, problem-solving, and analytical thinking

Proven ability to thrive in ambiguous and evolving environments

Additional Details

Compensation: Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy pay scales and will depend upon the candidates experience levels.

Start Date: As soon as possible