Enterprise Manager: Elmina - EduSpots Ghana

EduSpots is an innovative, dynamic, and locally driven UK and Ghanaian registered charity which connects, trains, and equips voluntary community educators to create transformative literacy and STEM opportunities through education spaces named ‘Spots’, with a focus on female empowerment and environmental action. Together, we are creating a movement of community-based changemakers.

Since 2016, through collaborating extensively with over 250 local volunteers, we have supported 50 communities in creating and running community-led and owned education spaces named ‘Spots’, with a strategy to support them in moving towards our ‘Dream Spot Model’. We are developing a model for a community-led education space with accompanying network engagement that could have applications across the world.

Our 16-strong but entirely part-time and remote working Ghanaian team creates collaborative learning opportunities through our Ignite and Community Leadership in Development (CLEd) Programmes which include training to lead our EduLit, EduSTEM, EduKidz and Ignite Girls clubs, alongside locally designed education projects, reaching over 15,000 students of all ages annually. Read our 2022 Impact Report here.

We are in an exciting period of our development. We won the Tes International Award in 2018 and the Big Give Supporters’ Choice Award in 2022, and we were recently selected as a finalist for the Their World Scale-Up Innovation Prize. In 2021, our Founder was a Finalist in The Varkey Foundation’s $1 million Global Teacher Prize, supported by UNESCO, partly for her role in developing EduSpots.

We are excited by our future. Do visit www.eduspots.org for further information.

Job Description

• Location: Elmina
• Reports to: Head of Operations
• Salary: Competitive, dependent on experience
• Hours: Full-time
• Applications close: Monday 9th October 2023

About this role

Further to creating a significant new library hub (‘Spot’) in Elmina, we are looking for an Enterprise Manager to lead a business development strategy to generate income through using the downstairs of Elmina Spot to generate income for EduSpots’ work. This could include sales of items including our books, renting out the space, creating a visitors’ centre and EduSpots’ gallery, and other suggestions to be led by the Enterprise Manager.

The Spot itself and its educational activities will be run by the local team, following the community-led nature of EduSpots’ model, but we envisage that the Enterprise Manager will provide support and advice to the local team, building a strong relationship with them.

In this role we are looking for a self-starter with strong interpersonal skills and outstanding task management abilities. They will have a broad skill set across operations, sales, marketing, community engagement and business development. You will be based in Elmina and be able to engage with local businesses and individuals to generate income whilst furthering the key vision of EduSpots to create a world in which communities unite to create the futures they want to see. The individual will also take a key role within the EduSpots staff team, overseeing the central and western region of Spots.

Main duties and responsibilities

• Oversee visitors to the Elmina site, introducing them to EduSpots’ work.
• Develop and implement a viable business plan for enterprises related to Elmina Enterprise Centre, working closely with the local community in this process.
• Build strong relationships through the engagement of local businesses, tourist sites and hotels in the Elmina area and beyond in EduSpots work, developing streams of income through support from visitors.
• Lead the development and implementation of a promotional and marketing strategy for entrepreneurial activities in Elmina such as space hire, creation of an EduSpots visitor centre, sales of local craft & wider events strategy, working closely with the local team.
• Support with sales of EduSpots resources including books and educational kits.
• Offer strong operational support relating to any EduSpots training sessions or conferences held at Elmina Spot, including booking accommodation and meals.
• Oversee further construction work at Elmina Spot, providing timely updates to the Head of Operations.
• Supporting the community volunteer team with their oversight of activities at the Spot.
• Supporting staff and volunteers through our Spot Operations leadership programme, helping to design monthly challenges and ensure their effective execution across their allocated Spots.

• Supporting with the recruitment and induction process of new Spots to their region.
• Completing Spot bi-annual visits, engaging with volunteers and wider stakeholders in the process, and sending reports back to management and the team.
• Working with the Head of Operations on supporting volunteers in the process of applying to, receiving, and reporting on Spot development grants.
• Contributing to the development and implementation of systems, tools and processes that enhance local Spot operations, and our wider organisational development.
• Putting together Stories of new communities or Spots that join the network.
• Supporting with the monitoring and evaluation of Spot activities and operations, likely including support with the development and trial of an EduSpots app.
• Planning and supporting in the organisation of regional and national training events for volunteers.
• Observing, reviewing, and analysing processes in EduSpots and across Spots to identify inefficiencies and areas where improvements could be made, feeding challenges and solutions back to the team.
• Supporting the roll-out of our safeguarding strategy, ensuring that Spots are all complying with the strategy and wider policy, reporting any safeguarding concerns to the safeguarding leads.

Required Skills or Experience

Knowledge & Experience

• Bachelors’ degree
• At least 5 years’ experience of project or events management, or of enterprise development.
• Strong abilities across sales, marketing, communications and community engagement.
• Basic finance skills, including generation of business plans, basic accounting, and budgeting.
• An ability to multitask and prioritise
• Strong IT knowledge and basic design skills, with a willingness and ability to learn

Personal Qualities & Skills 

• A genuine commitment to educational equity and community- driven change.
• Strong operations skills, alongside excellent organisational and time management skills.
• Proactive and able to work to maintain a high standard of performance with minimum supervision in an impact-driven environment.
• Strong communication skills, with an ability to build strong working relationships with people from diverse backgrounds, with an openness to new ways of working.
• A team player with a belief in the value of collaborative approaches to learning.
• A strong personal affinity with EduSpots’ mission, vision and values

Desirable

• Experience of working with an education NGO
• Experience of working in a multicultural team
• Volunteer experience and commitment.