Program Director Prayogshala at One Step Forward Foundation

About One Step Forward
Foundation Website: https://onestepindia.org/

We at One Step Forward Foundation believe that the growth of a society is deeply entrenched in its children. Our deep commitment to the students in the low-income communities of India stems from this powerful belief that continues to drive our work and vision. The foundation is the brainchild of Mr.Krishna Pant, co-founder of an Electronic Manufacturing Company with over 1500 employees. Despite his humble background and meager resources at the initial stages, he has been guiding the business venture along with his three other partners up till now over the last 30 years. Having crafted his success story, he is keen to give back to society based upon his personal experiences.

Being a science student himself, he felt a great need to involve, associate and motivate students from low-income backgrounds towards science education. He feels that science is our biggest life teacher for questioning, analyzing, and reasoning with logic. Therefore an effective science education also helps us in taking important decisions in life. This led him to inculcate, nurture and scale up a specially created program called Prayogshala.

Praygoshala

Website: http://onestepindia.org/beginnings/
Prayogshala started in a small classroom in East Delhi where, Shasanka, a teacher passionate about science wanted to give his students the mysterious joys of science. He realized that his resource-constrained classroom was but one of many across Delhi. A survey of 45 government and low-income private schools of Delhi gave him the following perspective on the state of science education.
Prayogshala, the flagship program of One Step Forward Foundation (OSFF) is designed to provide students with access to labs, trained mentors and broad opportunities in science. At Prayogshala, students are encouraged to question, hypothesize, and constantly validate those hypotheses through experiments.
Prayogshala took the responsibility of bringing science alive in the classrooms itself by providing three key inputs to schools that are- facility, faculty, and opportunity for students.

About LATE Shashank Mishra

As a graduate from BITS Pilani, when Shasanka has stepped into a govt. classroom to teach as a TFI fellow, he was shocked to see the severely under-resourced school. It lacked even a basic science lab, posing significant challenges for teaching science. The realities of his classroom reflected those of the nation where only a quarter of schools have basic science labs and aspirations for careers in science have fallen by 50% over the past decade. Disturbingly, a staggering 6 out of 10 science teachers feel ill-trained and unsupported to teach science. An urge to change this narrative led him to start Prayogshala. He wanted to re-ignite children’s interest in science, peak their curiosity, make them excited about the joys of experimentation and discovery.

Job Description

The Program Director is the key management leader of Prayogshala at One Step Forward Foundation. The Program Director is responsible for overseeing the administration, programs, and strategic plan of the organization. Other key duties include fundraising, marketing, partnership, and community outreach. The position reports directly to the Board of Directors.

Skills and Qualifications

● Passionate about Science Education and STEM.
● Strong understanding of the science education reality
● Transparent and high integrity leadership quality to lead program, people and partnerships.
● High-level strategic thinking and planning. Ability to convey the organizations strategic future to staff, board, volunteers, donors and general network.
● Active fundraising experience. Excellent donor relations skills and understanding of the funding community
● Previous success in establishing relationships with individuals and organizations of influence including funders, partner agencies, and volunteer
● Strong financial management skills, including budget preparation, analysis, decision making, and reporting.
● Minimum 5 years of relevant work experience in working in the education sector both on ground and managerial positions.

Key Role and Responsibilities

Organization Strategy
● Leading organization strategy and implementation on people, program, and partnership management.
● Responsible for deepening, accelerating, sustaining, and scaling the reach and impact of the project.

People Management
● Mentoring and coaching the internal team to meet deliverables.
● Setting structures for an effective enabling culture in the organization.

Fundraising and Partnership Management
● Building an active funder base.
● Cultivating donor, leading donor engagement to scale up the impact of the organization
● Cultivating partnerships with government, private bodies, and other NGOs to scale up the organization.

Program Management
● Lead programmatic interventions for the organization.
● Adapt and innovate on the Prayogshala products to increase quality and provide a seamless customer experience.
● Lead monitoring and evaluation of the program to report impact and finetune Prayogshala products.
● Responsible for setting effective systems to track scaling progress, and regularly evaluate program components, so as to measure successes that can be effectively communicated to the board, funders, and other constituents.

Outreach and Advocacy
● Setting structures for continuous engagement of the supporters, volunteers, board members.
● Leading strategy for internal and external communication.

Reporting: ED will report to Krishna Pant, Founder & President.

Compensation CTC: 7-9 Lacs PA + 5% to 10% of the annual funds raised

How to apply: Send your resume and a cover letter explaining your candidature for the role at info@onestepindia.org and krishnapant@sgst.com