Project Lead/ Senior Project Lead - Strategic Support States

Central Square Foundation (CSF)

Project Lead/ Senior Project Lead - Strategic Support States (Gandhinagar)

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 learning outcomes of children, especially from low-income communities.

We believe that ensuring Universal, Early, Conceptual and Procedural Mastery of Foundational Skills is absolutely essential for the overall success of the education system.

Position Summary

The objective is set in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 where it clearly emphasizes Foundation Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) and puts a rather ambitious target for ‘ensuring that all learners in Grade 3 achieve FLN by 2025’.

The FLN team is expected to support all states in working in a planned manner towards the achievement of the goal and ensure the success of the FLN Mission. Our goal is to act as catalysts and support the initiatives, schemes and programmes of the central and state governments towards ensuring all children achieve foundational literacy and numeracy skills by Grade 3 so that they make the successful shift from ‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn’.

Key responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

Support the state government of Gujarat in working towards and achieving milestones outlined in National Education Policy 2020, particularly around Foundation Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) and NIPUN Bharat
Direct and indirect engagement with senior political, bureaucratic and education leadership in the states to ensure alignment, focus and action on achieving FLN mission goals
Ensuring all the major workstreams and interventions get activated in the state and get implemented in consultation with stakeholders:
Goal setting and communication for learning (system assessments, baseline)
Teaching Learning Materials for children and teachers of primary grades
Capacity building of teachers, academic staff and officers
District governance mechanisms and institutional structures for implementation
Monitoring systems and processes to track progress
Potentially lead/build a team and manage their work and performance
Continuous programme monitoring and reporting to key stakeholders
Support capacity building activities including workshops, learning modules/capsules for different stakeholders

Required Qualifications, Skills and Abilities:

Strong academic background from a reputed institute with a Bachelor’s/Masters degree (preferred) in social sciences, management etc.
6 - 12 years of progressive hands-on work experience in a demanding corporate or non-profit workplace in leading projects end-to-end, managing diverse teams and influencing multiple stakeholders
Experience of implementation of social sector projects with state governments which have demonstrated results/outcomes
Experience of managing diverse and senior stakeholders in the state such as Secretaries, State Project Directors, Directors, Academicians, Consultants, NGOs etc.
Strong action-bias, influencing & communication skills – ability to synthesize technical insights into actionable program agendas, facilitate conflicting points of view, drive collective decision-making
Excellent people and project delivery skills, including ability to drive execution, manage multiple workstreams at a time and maturity to influence multiple internal and external stakeholders
Entrepreneurial spirit and ‘can-do’ attitude & hands-on operating style suited to working in a small organization setting, where teamwork and resourcefulness are highly valued
Willingness to adapt to dynamic nature of work and travel
Basic Gujarati Reading, Writing and speaking skills