Job advert - Senior Writer
Based: remote but with preference for Sub-saharan Africa or UK. Needs to spend extensive time travelling to Ghana to understand the programme well.
Summary
Our current annual budget is approximately £5m and we plan to double this over the next few years to support our expansion ambitions. The majority of our funding is currently from grants (trusts, foundations and institutional grants) and we see this income-stream being the main way to fund our expansion plans.
The Senior Writer will be required to support fundraising efforts through donor reporting, impact reporting, proposal writing and applications for challenge events, awards and speaking engagements.
In addition, the postholder will develop high quality communications and advocacy collateral that showcase the organisation, our impact and our approach to policy-makers, funders, practitioners and other stakeholders.
This is a unique opportunity for an ambitious writer to join a fun, high impact, mission driven organisation.
For a detailed understanding of the role and person criteria, please see the Job Description.
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 through randomised control trial to improve cognitive and socio-emotional skills and reduce malnutrition for 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. In addition, we started a radio programme for parents during COVID and this has now become a permanent fixture. 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.
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. In addition, an award-winning international research team are conducting a further randomised control trial to help us understand its impacts at scale. We see this as the test case that will provide the blueprint to take the programme to scale it to a new country within the next few 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.
How to apply
If this sounds like you, please send your CV and a cover letter (max 2 pages) explaining why you’d be the best candidate for the role to jobs@livelyminds.org before the deadline.
Deadline for applications: 11:59pm GMT on 26th November 2023