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Programme Director Appointment Brief May 2019
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When leaders of emerging economies chart a course for their countries’ prosperity When investment in a youthful population today builds growth and stability for tomorrow When different sectors collaborate to deliver transformational change That’s a Big Win.
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Programme Director
Introduction Welcome, Thank you for your interest in becoming one of Big Win Philanthropy’s new Programme Directors. Founded in 2015, we are an independent foundation that invests in children and young people in developing countries to improve their lives and to maximize demographic dividends for long term economic growth. We see children and young people as a critical asset for national development and stability. Our focus is on investments in sub-Saharan Africa that promote three areas of human capital growth: brain development, education and youth employment. Uniquely led by the priorities of our African partners, we support leaders to effectively define and deliver the ‘big win’ goals in these areas that they regard as most important for their countries and regions. We believe that partnering with governments in this way is the only route to achieving deep sustainable change. We are now seeking a Programme Director to join our team, preferably with sectoral and contextual experience in Education or Youth Employment. While each of our Programme Directors has a specific area of technical strength, we collaborate as teams inside and outside our areas of technical expertise to ensure that the needs of our partners are met. With outstanding representation and relationship building skills, you will lead high-level partnerships with governments and other implementation partners, working closely with them to design and manage investments that meet their goals. With experience of driving complex and large-scale programme implementation in sub-Saharan Africa, you understand how to manage politically sensitive relationships with government leaders in the most effective way. Your exceptional communication abilities across different cultural contexts and belief in the value of true partnership working to achieve change will be essential. To lead us to programmatic success, you will preferably bring substantial knowledge of the education or youth employment landscape in multiple countries and a highly strategic and entrepreneurial approach. You’ll be supported by a deeply committed founder and multinational board, as well as an experienced and talented staff team. At Big Win Philanthropy, you can expect a collaborative, supportive and ambitious culture. We are a small and entrepreneurial team that encourages new ideas and we are passionate about helping transform outcomes for children and young people in sub-Saharan African countries. We believe we are uniquely placed to leverage impact that extends beyond this initiative, and are seeking people that share our values and our vision for transformational change. Dr. Kesetebirhan Admasu Chief Executive Officer
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Who We are Big Win Philanthropy is an independent foundation that invests in children and young people in developing countries to improve their lives and to maximise demographic dividends for long term economic growth. Big Win Philanthropy was founded in 2015 and is comprised of private foundations in the US and the UK. Key themes for our work include: • Identifying opportunities with the potential to be national or global game-changers. • Catalysing collaboration between sectors. • Using data to inform priorities, refine programs and assess results. • Giving focus and prestige to implementation as well as to policy. We have a multinational board of respected figures from business and development and an experienced staff team. Please go to www.bigwin.org for more information about our programs, values and methodologies.
Our Principles Commitment to human development. We see children and young people as providing the underlying potential for sustainable economic growth. We support leaders to make smart, longterm investments to realize this potential, rather than focusing on short-term fixes.
Cross-ministerial collaboration. Most major social challenges require cross-sector solutions to optimise efficiency and impact. We support collaboration between different government ministries, and we seek to forge partnerships between government, business and civil society.
Respect for government leadership. While a range of actors have important roles to play in human capital development, governments are ultimately the stewards of a nation’s people. We support the vision and ambition of political leaders in developing countries and align our support with their development priorities, including support for leadership capacity-building.
Support for implementation. We believe that execution and delivery are just as important as policy and deserve equal attention and prestige. We support leaders to see their programs through to quality implementation.
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Long-term vision. Major social shifts and demographic trends are often neglected in the context of short-term political cycles. We support leaders with the integrity to care as much about societal progress as political gains.
Evidence-led approaches. We support leaders in utilising data to inform their priorities, refine program design, monitor outcomes, improve costeffectiveness, measure impact and challenge orthodoxy.
Ambitious and scalable solutions. We seize opportunities that are strategic, scalable and have relevance beyond a specific project to be gamechanging.
Our Approach We see children and young people as an asset for national development and stability. Led by the priorities of our African partners, we focus on investments that promote three areas of human capital growth: brain development, education and youth employment. Brain Development The development of a child’s brain provides the foundation for their success later in life. A large proportion of children across sub-Saharan Africa suffer impaired brain development because of key factors including: undernutrition, insufficient care and stimulation from care-givers, and the experiencing or witnessing of violence. We support leaders to address these factors and help ensure that children can realise their potential.
Youth Employment Africa’s youth population is expected to double by 2050. Now is the time for strategic investments to create quality employment opportunities on a massive scale for this emerging new generation. We support leaders to create meaningful employment opportunities that provide liveable wages, are sustainable, and can absorb a range of skills, and to make investments to ensure that young people are employment-ready.
Education for Productivity 10-12 million African youth enter the workforce every year, many without the skills they need to find meaningful employment. Better education is essential for developing the qualities and skills young people need to become more productive – both in terms of their own quality of life and their contribution to national economic growth. We support leaders to improve the quality of education and make it more relevant to the realities of a changing workforce.
Our Offer We support leaders to effectively define and deliver the “big win” goals they regard as most important for their countries and regions. This can include support for: • Strategic and operational planning. • The use of evidence and best practice to achieve cost-effective impact. • Implementation and performance management including monitoring dashboards and delivery units. • Leadership development. • Collaboration across ministries/sectors. • Communications.
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Examples of Our Work Big Win Philanthropy is proud to support a number of exciting and important projects. Although Big Win’s education programming to date has been less expansive than its nutrition and youth employment programmes, examples of some education initiatives are profiled below. Upgrading education quality in Liberia 10% of the teacher payroll did not exist or were not teachers. $3.1m of annual savings will be made 1,800 new teachers can be employed Liberia is the sixth-poorest country in the world, working to recover from two civil wars and the Ebola crisis. With 43% of Liberian people illiterate and 53% aged under 20, better education is essential for breaking the cycle of poverty. Big Win Philanthropy has been supporting the Government of Liberia to improve education and training through four programs. Teacher vetting From 2016 to 2018, Big Win Philanthropy supported the Liberian Ministry of Education to clean up the national teacher payroll. The program included: • Checking every teacher’s qualifications and testing every teacher’s abilities. • Removing from the payroll people who did not exist or who were not teachers. • Reclassifying those not up to standard onto lower pay grades, until they improve through retraining. About 19,500 payroll names were vetted, and over 2,000 were found not to exist or not to be teachers. The removal of these will generate $3.1m of annual savings, allowing about 1,800 new teachers to be employed. Further improvements will come from retraining under-performing teachers and replacing the worst performing teachers. 6
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Education Delivery Unit The 2017 Liberian elections saw the first peaceful transition of power for 70 years, but the absence of a civil service for the education sector means that achieving continuity through the transition is hard. To help maintain the momentum for improvements in Liberian education and to give the new education minister a strong start, Big Win is supporting a delivery unit of eight staff in the Ministry of Education. The new minister has announced a comprehensive review of the education reforms launched by the previous administration, with the aim of building on successful programs and identifying new interventions. The President’s Young Professionals Program Big Win Philanthropy has been supporting the President’s Young Professionals Program in Liberia. This trains and mentors college graduates who are given work placements in Liberian government agencies. A 2016 evaluation by Princeton University found that 90% of the alumni remain in government or studying on government scholarships with some becoming department directors or assistant ministers. The Program offers a model to other countries wanting to recruit the best and brightest young people into public service. Positioning Liberia to access outcomes-based funding Big Win is supporting the Liberian Ministry of Education to work with the organisation Social Finance to develop ways of measuring performance in terms of outcomes rather than levels of activity. As well as enabling the Ministry to be more resultsfocused, this will also help it to access internationally available outcomes-based sources of funding.
Big Win Philanthropy has a number of new programs that have been approved by its board and are being developed. Results-based funding for education in Africa Big Win Philanthropy is supporting the start-up phase of a proposed new $1bn Education Outcomes Fund being established by the Education Commission, the Global Business Coalition for Education and the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment. The fund will aim to transform educational attainment in Africa and the Middle East through pay-for-results Development Impact Bonds. Its strategy will be to rapidly scale up proven or innovative interventions in areas such as early childhood development and educational technology, to help low income countries transform the level and quality of education provision.
Partners Big Win Philanthropy works directly with ministers, state governors, and leaders of major national institutions and multilateral organisations. We support them in designing and implementing strategic interventions that help deliver their priorities for human capital development. Where possible, we work across government departments and ministries. We seek leaders who integrate and align their efforts with national priorities and galvanise support and engagement across historical silos. Some of our current and past government and multilateral partners include: - - - - -
African Development Bank Group The Government of Ethiopia The Government of Liberia The Government of Mozambique The Government of Kenya
Finances Big Win does not actively engage in fundraising nor are any agencies used to fundraise on the Charity’s behalf. Instead, it funds its activities through an expendable endowment.
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Role Description Job Title: Programme Director Location: London with significant international travel required Reporting to: CEO Salary: Competitive Purpose: To serve as one of Big Win Philanthropy’s Programme Directors, to lead partnerships with governments and other implementation partners and work closely with them to design and manage charitable investments. Programme Directors are responsible for ensuring quality execution of grant and technical support programmes; leading evidence-based decision-making; and driving highly leveraged charitable outcomes.
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Main accountabilities Programme development, delivery and performance • Lead the design of sharp programme goals and clear milestones, from the overall programme concept and vision to articulation of tangible and ambitious Big Wins, as well as the pathway to the goals. • Design a critical path of key levers for programmatic success and successful transition to implementation that provides clarity for all stakeholders. • Develop an overall landscape on education that covers the evidence and range of initiatives government leaders in sub-Saharan Africa might choose to pursue, depending on their context.
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• Communicate openly and regularly with the Executive Team to keep them abreast of progress and challenges of all programmes being managed. Seek from the Executive Team advice, guidance and trouble-shooting input on complex, problematic or high-risk programmes, to ensure the effective and timely resolution of issues if they arise. • Work with Big Win’s Controller to provide the Executive Team with accurate and meaningful financial and management information to support effective and evidence-based decision-making and planning. • Use sound financial acumen to manage
Big Win Philanthropy budgets and resourcing for all managed Ensure with in-country counterparts that to maximise program there is a sharedPrinciples understanding of the win – Version 1.1programmes effectiveness and efficiency. to be achieved and hone that understanding throughout each initiative.
• Work constructively with country counterparts to ensure good quality implementation of programmes, closely monitoring their effective and efficient execution toward the agreed targets. • Remain clear about how Big Win adds value seek always to maintain the right balance of driving progress, performance and problem solving, while not enabling the in-country team to outsource core management responsibilities to Big Win.
• Identify and manage any risks associated with a given programme so that the interests and reputation of Big Win and the programme champion are protected. • Actively strategize throughout the effort how Big Win and our partners can pursue greater and ideally global impact that extends beyond the initiative.
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Person Specification Experience • Experience with complex and large-scale programme implementation, ideally in sub-Saharan African countries. Good understanding of how governmental departments work, ideally with direct experience working within government. • Significant interactions at high policy levels within governments, with proven experience in managing complex and politically sensitive relationships with different stakeholders. • Demonstration of methodical program oversight and management. • Exemplary work ethic with a drive for concrete results in a complex environment. • Experienced in the use of programmatic tools such as dashboard creation, program monitoring and strategic planning. Knowledge, Skills and Abilities • Substantial, relevant expertise in Education, ideally in sub-Saharan Africa. This will include familiarity with evidence, key actors and interventions in a broad range of areas. An optimal candidate will bring a reservoir of contacts and prototypes for government leaders wishing to pursue initiatives in this area. Candidates with a background in Youth Employment as above will also be considered.
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• Good financial acumen and proven ability to manage budgets and resources tightly and prudently. • Educated to post-graduate degree level, or equivalent by experience, within a relevant specialty. Personal Qualities and Attitudes • Team player with excellent people skills and with highly developed communication, presentation, negotiation and influencing skills. • Full alignment with the Big Win ethos of supporting the ambition of policy champions at national level without prescribing external agendas.
How to Apply Please forward your CV with a supporting statement of no more than 500 words, detailing why you are interested in Big Win Philanthropy and how you meet the person specification. Please ensure you include any dates when you will not be available for interview as per the recruitment timetable.
Recruitment Timetable Interviews with Prospectus: 7 May – 23 May 2019
Applications should be made via our retained advisors at Prospectus, Fiona Wansborough and Eva Farina, at the email addresses below. fiona.wansborough@prospect-us.co.uk eva.farina@prospect-us.co.uk
Queries
interviews with Big Win: May / June 2019
If you wish to have an informal discussion about the opportunity, please contact our retained advisors Fiona Wansborough or Eva Farina at Prospectus on +44 (0)20 7691 1920 or via email.
Big Win is committed to committed to providing equal opportunities for all. Applications are welcomed from all sections of the community.
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g Win Philanthropy nciples – Version 1.1
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Programme Director