Program Associate

Office Location: Kolkata (extensive travel in Jharkhand) **About Us**: Aangan works with children in dangerous situations like child trafficking, child marriage, hazardous work and abuse. Our prevention model targets "hotspot" districts across the country where children are most at risk - either because these are known red‐light areas, sites of hazardous child labour or are associated with harmful traditions like high rates of child marriage and girl child discrimination. Here we work with parents, children and government officials to build strong care and protection systems that keep children safe. **About Program**: Our program in Jharkhand needs competent and motivated program associates to join our team. The individual will have the opportunity to be part of a program that builds platforms or child safety systems in schools to facilitate dialogue between empowered community women groups and School authorities like Principals and teachers to ensure children are safe. **Why work with us?** You get the opportunity to interact, engage and flex your expert facilitation muscles to inspire, motivate and mobilize community women and girls from across 3 districts in Jharkhand. Be a part of a unique program: You get to play a key role in building systems within the schools where the voice of adolescent girls and women is heard and plan community-based solutions to ensure children are in schools, safe and supported. You prefer the ‘rolling stone’ life: This program allows one to travel extensively (approx. 180 days in a year) across 3 districts to train and mobilize local community women. Program Associate roles and responsibilities: At Aangan, our Program Associates enable marginalized communities to participate in decisions that affect them and their children directly. They help build trust as well as create strong communication channels between the community (specifically women and girls) and the school systems. To keep this ecosystem humming, our Program Associates get to the root - a. they engage meaningfully with women in the community. b. create platforms for schools, women, and girls to share child harm trends and data from their communities to raise concerns and access their rights to education, safety and participation. c. they coach women until they are able to take concrete steps to ensure safety of children from various harm and risks. As a Program Associate a typical day might include the following: - Conduct and assist in quarterly training sessions with women groups from specific blocks across 3 districts in Jharkhand to ensure that the, - women groups can facilitate safety conversations with adolescent girls, women groups with the support of school and other local governance systems can facilitate community-based solutions, support vulnerable families to become resilient to reduce and respond to child harm in the communities. - Regular interaction with the School Principals and other local stakeholders to ensure that the school safety systems are institutionalized and that they are accountable towards the program. - Inspire and motivate women groups through training to build their knowledge and skills on child protection. - Instill a sense of ownership and group cohesiveness among the women groups and the school systems and draw from them relevant experiences and local knowledge. - Coach women groups until they can take concrete steps to ensure safety of children from various harm and risks. - Train the women groups to collect data, observe and capture trends, identify gaps and issues and provide solutions to address gaps in a timely fashion. - Identify and respond to gaps in the implementation of the program to ensure that the overall outcomes are met. - Creating cross-learning opportunities among community groups. - Collate and develop case studies and stories from the field. - Work closely with the Data Field officers in collecting and collating data from the field and using the data in strategizing the implementation plan. - Be a part of a pool of Program Associates at Aangan who contribute to building internal capacity for training and facilitation. **Competencies and Abilities** - 3+ years of prior training experience. - Excellent communication skills. - Proficiency in Hindi, Bengali, and English. - Creative and critical thinking ability. - Ability to motivate an attitude of learning before, during, and after the classroom sessions. - Willingness to listen learn and respect different perspectives brought into the sessions. - Organized and able to manage time well. - Willingness to travel to remote areas. **Education and Experience** - Graduate/Post Graduate. - At least 2 years of experience in the area of Child Protection or community-based work. - Experience with training groups of adults preferred. Pay: ₹25,000.00 - ₹50,000.00 per month Schedule: - Day shift **Experience**: - total work: 3 years (preferred) Work Location: In person