Chief Executive Position –  I Am Somebody’s Child Soldier

Nonprofit Organization specialising in The Advancement of Mental Health, Digital Literacy and Children Empowerment of rescued child soldiers and child victims of war in Northern Uganda.

Hours: 0.6 FTE (3 days a week)
Contract Type: 12 months
Salary: £35,000-40,000 per annum pro rata
Location: Remote working
Start Date: September 2024

Organisation Overview

I am Somebody’s Child Soldier (IAMSCS) is dedicated to empowering and advocating for the rights of rescued child soldiers and child victims of war suffering from post war trauma and financial instability and displacement from education system.

Our focus is on providing access to mental health, rehabilitation programs, sustainable livelihood initiatives, as well as education opportunities to children, young people
and people with disabilities within Northen Uganda.

Position Overview

IAMSCS launched in 2014 and is about to celebrate its 10-year anniversary. IAMSCS has been led by the founding CEO, Shirah Z Mansaray for the past 10 years who is now stepping away from this role to lead a law firm as it’s Managing Partner.

IAMSCS has grown over the past 10 years and has impacted children across Uganda and United Kingdom. Our main focus areas are:

Our school-based interventions – both for pupils and teachers including digital literacy.
Our Activism work –for campaigners, advocates and students wanting to tackle social injustice.
Pursuing national changes within the education sector – working with groups/schools/partners across Uganda to support national education sector and national changes to the curriculum.

Since launching 10 years ago, IAMSCS has been led by our Founder and a committed board of trustees. We are now seeking a dynamic, passionate individual to lead the growth of the organisation from a grassroots organisation to a medium-sized organisation – both in terms of impact and annual income.

Your role will be pivotal in steering our organisation’s growth, enhancing our reach, and deepening our impact in the fight against social injustice. Are you keen to join a founder-led organisation, with a strong network of supporters and board management? Then this role is for you.

We are in a great position now to onboard someone with the skills, expertise, and experience to take the organisation to the next level in terms of income, impact, and growing our team.

You will be joining a welcoming, supportive team as the new CEO and our Founder will be reducing her hours gradually over the first six weeks to work alongside you and support with transitioning into the new role.

About You:

We are looking for an individual who embodies the spirit of social justice and youth justice. The individual should possess the vision and skills to lead our organisation through a period of significant growth.

The individual should be confident at leading our team and reporting to the board of trustees and is encouraged to take a hands-on approach as an when needed. The right candidate will help IAMSCS to balance our strategic national objectives, on-the-ground activity and financial sustainability.

The right candidate should have previous experience as a CEO or as a Senior Fundraiser with at least 3 years management experience. The candidate should have the right attitude, passion and remain pro-active in securing the organisation’s future.

Key Responsibilities:

• Project Support & Management
• Working with our Executive Assistant (EA) to ensure the successful delivery of our annual projects and making sure we are hitting the targets of each project.

This could include:

• Ensuring the right number of partners/schools are onboarded.
• Ensuring we are meeting the predicted beneficiary numbers in the project application.
• Ensuring we are meeting the predicted impact statistics.
  Supporting our EA when challenges arise.
• Deciding whether projects match with our organisation values and making key decisions whether to pursue 2nd round funding for projects.
• Writing and preparing post-project reports for funders, stakeholders and partners.
• Collaborating with program director to design and implement scalable versions of our programmes – striving towards financial sustainability and increased impact.

Organisational Growth & Income Generation:

• Reviewing our 3-year strategic plan and identifying any new potential areas of expansion.
• Leading the strategic growth of the organisation by 200%-400% over the first nine months– in terms of annual income and impact.
• Working towards financial sustainability for the organisation and its projects.
• Identifying new grants/government tenders/corporate sponsorships that are relevant to our vision/mission and leading funding applications and project bids.

Day-to-day Management:

• Reporting into our Board of Trustees, keeping them up to date on our activities, policies and procedures.
• Line-managing our team and volunteers whilst supporting their projects as and when necessary or when challenges arise.
• Writing and managing our annual budgets – ensuring we are not overspending, flagging, and responding to financial risks as and when they appear.
• Leading recruitment activity as and when needed – recruiting new facilitators and volunteers when needed.
• Creating, applying, and updating our policies, ensuring our HR processes, safeguarding and other vital policies are robust.
• Having monthly meetings with our Trustee Board and actioning suggested changes to our projects/programmes made by the Board

Leading National Change:

• Working with our networks to support on the “Justice in Education” campaign – this could include attending/leading monthly meetings, attending political conferences, securing meetings with leaders and sponsors and national influencers to present our evidence and suggestions for policy changes.
• Mobilising our supporters to attend some of these meetings – allowing them to have a platform to speak from their lived experiences of social injustice as a young person.

Growing our Network & Reach:

• Growing our relationships and networks of schools/local authorities/youth organisations to increase our work inside and outside of Uganda – identifying target areas to focus.
• Using these networks to pilot and scale new/national interventions.
• Growing our relationships with local councils in Uganda and the UK.

Required Qualifications and Experience:

• Proven experience in leading and growing charitable organisations.
• Experience in education/charitable organisations or social justice.
• Demonstrated ability in team motivation and management.
• Financial literacy and experience in good governance practices.
• Successful track record in growing networks of stakeholders.
• Successful track record of income generation and managing government, trust, and foundation-funded projects.
• Experience in developing and scaling interventions.
• Passionate about social justice.

PLEASE READ- How to Apply:

We are asking all applications to submit a short video (up to 3 minutes long) and a cover letter – explaining why you want to apply for this role and why it’s a good fit for you. You can submit your CV, cover letter and video via the email attached to this application. Any applications without a cover letter or video will not be considered.

You can submit your application to info@iamsomebodyschildsoldier.org

Application deadline is 10^th June 2024
and Interviews will take place during 17^th and 21^st June 2024.

Website: I Am Somebodys Child Soldier