Associate, School & Community Relations

Teach For India is on a journey to reach an India free of poverty and filled with love by ending educational inequity in our country. Fifteen years into our journey we are a movement of ~5000+ Alumni working at all levels of the education system, who are reaching 1 in 10 children across the country. These Alumni have graduated from our two-year Fellowship Program where they taught in under-resourced classrooms to put ~33,500 low-income children on a different life path. Today, we have ~1000 Fellows and are the largest pipeline of driven, skilled talent into the educational ecosystem in India. Over 16,000 Teach For India students have appeared for the 10th grade board examinations till date, with an impressive 95% pass rate across cities as of November 2024.

In 2022, we embarked on Phase 4, our fourth strategic phase. We have a bold and ambitious ten-year journey ahead of us that aims to grow 50,000 leaders, who will work collectively, and with love, to transform the lives of 1 in 10 low-income children in our regions, through an education that unleashes the potential of self, others and India. In this decade, five key priorities will lead us to this vision.

Our work will only be completed when we have built a movement of leaders that is large enough to ensure that every child in India attains an excellent education.

We pride ourselves as being a passionate, idealistic, mission-driven team of individuals. We’re committed to learning and excellence in our roles, and to being deeply rooted in our core values.

The School and Community Relations Associate in Chennai is responsible for managing school and community partnerships as well as supporting the Program team with Stakeholder Management in schools and communities. You will be responsible for setting a strong culture of problem-solving and collaboration amongst Fellows and Stakeholders, and work closely with the Program team and Government Relations Manager to ensure win-win partnerships in schools and communities.

As Associate, School and Community Relations, you will:

Align Stakeholder Management with Program Priorities

• Engage the School Leaders towards deepening their understanding of our movement and creating champions of our work in the region.
• Collect information about stakeholder investment and management in the city through a variety of methods (shadowing, interviews, surveys, etc).
• Consistently track, analyse, and interpret data to problem-solve on issues related to schools and communities and unearth weaknesses and problems, and root causes behind them.
• Formulate recommendations and solutions with attention to Program priorities, capabilities, and limitations to share with relevant stakeholders during school team meetings.
• Amplify best practices to internal partners like Schools, Program Managers, and Fellows.
• Network with different organisations to tackle school, student, and community-related issues.
• Ensure smooth MoU renewals with schools and explore expansion into other government / low-income private schools in the city.

Build Capacity among Fellows, Staff, and other stakeholders

• Support the Senior Program Manager/Program Coach to design sessions for Inductions, City conferences, Program Fridays for both Fellows and Program Managers on topics like but not limited to, problem-solving, expectation setting, stakeholder mapping, negotiation skills, and conflict resolution.
• Lead city-wide spaces like HM conferences etc to bring HMs, teachers, and/or parents together.
• Collaborate with Program Managers to support Fellows in schools and work closely with the Fellows to implement new/efficient structures in partner schools.
• Collaborate with Fellows to organise parent-teacher meetings; identify parent champions and support them in engaging the parent community on critical ed-related issues.
• Support Fellows in implementing high-impact BTCPs (Be The Change Projects) in the community.

Maintain School and Community Partnerships

• Design a year-long Community Engagement strategy for the city and drive implementation through Staff and Fellows.
• Identify, build, and share a database of initiatives/policies/schemes that could potentially benefit our partner schools, parents, and children in safety, health, and education.
• Support Program Leads in Fellow placements by taking into account various requirements at the local, city, and organizational level.
• Identify and cultivate new and existing partnerships to provide support to Fellows and Staff to meet programmatic goals.
• Manage city-level School, community, and Fellow databases along with the current reality of all partners.
• To support the Manager- GSCR to obtain necessary permission from the School, Government like District Directors of Education and Additional Directors of Education to ensure renewal of permission to operate.
• Work with the community centres and schools to ensure the required instructional hours and learning for all students.

Additional Responsibilities:

• Support in Recruitment, Selection, and Matriculation based on interest and skills.
• Support at Training at Institute based on interest and skills.
• Support in planning and organising city events like City Conferences, induction, and mid-year retreats.
• Support the City Child Protection Committee, to focus on child safety and well-being for all students in the city.

As an Associate at Teach For India, you will:

• Contribute to the team goals and priorities beyond individual goals and priorities.
• Serve as an ambassador of the Teach For India brand and an advocate for our work and for educational equity in our country through both internal and external communication after committing time in our classrooms to understand our work more deeply.
• Support with key organisational areas such as Recruitment, Selection, Fundraising, Volunteering, Movement Building.

• Graduate in any stream with 2+ years work experience.
• Previous experience of relationship building and stakeholder engagement .
• Excellent communication skills – written and verbal.
• Willingness to visit schools and communities on a daily basis.
• Ability to negotiate with a diverse set of stakeholders to drive desired outcomes.
• Ability to quickly build relationships and influence others without authority.
• Strong problem solving, critical thinking and decision-making skills to solve reactive, critical and complex problems.
• Data orientation and impact analysis.
• Excellent organizing and planning skills.
• Experience of having planned and executed complex projects with multiple priorities in a college or work setting.
• Experience of having collaborated effectively with a broad range of individuals and groups.
• Experiences of having taken initiative in the past.
• Previous experience in teaching/education would be an added advantage (not mandatory).

• Experience working with stakeholders in low-income communities.
• Ability to work with data to drive decisions.
• Passion for and belief in the importance of mobilizing stakeholders to effect change.

Note: We want to hear your unique voice and perspectives through the process, hence all applicants are expected to personally author statements of purpose/essays in the application form. Sole use of AI or Chat-GPT based tools may lead to disqualification from the process.