Job Opportunity:Support Officer
Location: Nairobi and other towns
About Bridge International Academies
Bridge International Academies is a startup revolutionizing education across Africa with a truly unique business model. The company has launched a large-scale franchise-like network of ultra low-cost for-profit private primary schools across Africa.
Our schools profitably deliver high-quality education for less than $4 per child per month, enabling local school managers to operate their school businesses profitably, while creating a highly successful business at the central level.
We have launched our first twenty-six schools in Kenya, have eleven more opening in September 2011 and plan to rapidly scale the company to serve more than 1 million students across Africa.
Description
About this position
We are seeking full-time Support Officer(s), who will help support and monitor the operations of a group of schools within our network.
Bridge International has developed extensive systems and tools for its operations that allow someone we hire from the local community to easily and successfully open and manage the operations of a school – we call this our “School in Box” model. Most of the systems and tools we developed are low-tech and paper-based because of the environment in which we work. It starts with our very detailed Operators Manual and spans across all instructional, financial, operations and human resource management issues and systems.
Support Officers work with a group of our schools (both the school managers and the teachers in those schools) to ensure that the management and monitoring systems and tools that are part of our “School in a Box” are effectively implemented at individual schools both by school managers and teachers. This position is also critical in providing feedback to the central headquarters as to ways to improve upon these systems.
Support Officers focus on all of the elements of the operations at the school site.
These include:
- Marketing & Recruiting New Students
- Student Payment Systems
- Monitoring instructional delivery by teachers (using guidelines and rubrics from our instruction team)
- Personnel Management
- Rules & Procedures
- Facilities Management
- And more
This is a very hands-on job, with the Support Officers spending time mainly in the field (in our case, the slums of Nairobi) working with schools about 80% of the time.
About You
- You are a very process or system-oriented person.
- You have experience implementing detailed systems, processes and rules in the field
- You have experience managing and helping grow one or more small businesses in challenging environments.
- You have proven that you are capable of motivating, supervising and supporting other managers, being supportive or tough when the situation is appropriate.
- You have successfully mentored individuals over a long period of time
- Experience in working in very poor communities (slums) is a real plus
- You are not afraid of getting your hands dirty
- You have experience managing projects with many moving pieces, and building and managing teams of people
- You function well in a fast-paced informal environment where constant change is the norm and the bar for quality is set high.
- You are extremely patient and have the ability to mentor & lead people who come from disadvantaged communities
- Bachelors degree
Our team has a passionate belief that basic primary education is critical to the development of every child, family, community and nation.
We believe that it is possible to address this critical need for poor families through new and innovative approaches leveraging the private sector, and that by providing low-cost but high-quality primary education, we will give millions of children the opportunity to accomplish their dreams.
We are looking for someone who wants to join us in this rewarding task.
Requirements/Skills:
- 5+ years experience in operations, management, education or related experience
- Franchise or chain management experience in Kenya is a real plus
- Driven, disciplined, self-motivated, and entrepreneurial
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Must be a team player and open to new approaches and ideas
- Strong project management skills
- Ability to organize, prioritize, and manage multiple tasks
- Basic computer and web skills
- Ability to dig deeper into issues and pay attention to detail
- Being proactive in highlighting and addressing issues
