Head of Ghana Partnerships At Lively Minds

About us

Our mission is to get preschool children in rural Africa school-ready. At present over 250 million children worldwide fail to receive the education and care they need in their early years which means they are less likely to do well in school, find gainful employment, and are at greater risk of early marriage, early parenthood and even criminality. Current approaches to solving this crisis are not proving effective or scalable in lower middle income countries.

That’s where Lively Minds comes in. We have developed an award-winning Early Childhood Development programme that has been proven to get pre-schoolers in hard-to-reach communities school-ready, so they have a greater chance of succeeding in school and in life. The programme provides marginalised Mothers with a parenting course that empowers them to run educational Play Schemes for pre-schoolers and to provide better home-based care, using cheap local resources. The programme is delivered through government partners, is cheap and highly scalable. It genuinely has the potential to play a transformative role in ending the global ECD crisis.

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Over the past few years the Lively Minds programme has been delivered in over 350 communities in rural Ghana and Uganda reaching over 50,000 children. During COVID we launched a radio programme for parents and this is now reaching over 2million households each week. We are extremely proud that the Government of Ghana have now adopted the programme and we have a ground-breaking partnership with them to support them to institutionalise it, fund it and to scale it to 60 education districts, reaching over 4000 communities and 1million children. We see this partnership as the test case that will provide the blueprint to take the programme to scale in Uganda and elsewhere within the next 5 years.

We’re a lively ambitious organisation, determined to have a major positive impact on the world. We work hard, at a fast pace, in a challenging environment. We expect everyone to give their best to achieve the best possible results. Our work is demanding but provides plenty of opportunity for innovation, responsibility, growth, collaboration, creativity and fun. We want all staff to be happy, fulfilled and to feel appreciated and valued in their work.

About the role

Our scale goal is that Government of Ghana will institutionalise the Lively Minds programme and run and fund it nationwide as part of their normal services. The Head of Ghana Partnerships will be part of our senior management team and will contribute to this goal by developing and implementing our government and stakeholder engagement strategy. They will also support the development of our scale strategy for future expansion in to new countries.

The postholder will have managerial responsibility for a Government Engagement Manager, Communications Officer and for managing our day-to-day relationships with government partners in Ghana at national level.

Main duties and responsibilities

Strategic Development

• Contribute to the global scale and sustainability strategy for Lively Minds.
• Identify and drive forward government motivation, uptake and sustainability strategies.

Government partnership in Ghana

We have a detailed partnership agreement and operational plan with Government of Ghana which sets out roles, responsibilities and commitments geared towards ensuring that Government can run and sustain the programme themselves. The partnership is structured on a payment by results basis, with termly deliverables to be achieved.

• Develop and implement strategies, founded in behavioural science techniques, to build the motivation, generate buy-in and enthusiasm for the programme within the highest levels of Government of Ghana.
• Provide technical assistance and supervision to government partners to ensure that termly partnership milestones and outcomes are met, and advise on the implications should milestones be missed.
• Develop strategies to support the institutionalisation of the programme in to government policies, governance structures, budgets/finances and communications,
• Coordinate with the implementation and M&E team to ensure that government partners are aware of implementation challenges and successes and support them to take actions to manage risks and capitalise on opportunities.
• Develop and own the organisation’s political strategy for Ghana, staying abreast of political threats and opportunities that could impact upon the programme

Raising the visibility of the organisation, the programme and the approach

• Support in the development and implementation of a communications strategy and action plan being jointly developed with Government.
• Represent the organisation at networking and learning events
• Develop promotional activities and materials for stakeholders including videos, field visits, conferences, impact & progress reports, presentations, speeches, blogs, website content.
• Seek opportunities for collaboration with other ECD stakeholders, particularly to advocate for ECD investment and policy-making
• Develop and implement advocacy and campaign strategies to further our core mission, that parents are the primary ECD providers

Fundraising and financial sustainability

• Develop and strengthen relations with existing funders through donor reporting and engagement
• Identify and progress relationships with new donors through fundraising activities, networking meetings with development partners, philanthropic organisations and corporations
• Work with the Head of Finance and with Government partners to develop budgets for the sustainability of the programme, and support government fundraising efforts

For a detailed understanding of the role and person criteria, please see the Job Description.