Job Title: Senior Program Associate, Partnerships – Karnataka (South Hub – Systems Demonstrations)
About Dream a Dream
Dream a Dream is a non-profit organization working to transform the experience of education for the 130+ million children living in poverty in India. Our aim is to change the purpose of education towards the idea of Thriving for every child. Since 1999, Dream a Dream has mainstreamed life skills as a critical approach to help children overcome adversity and learn to thrive. Today, the organization is transforming the Indian education ecosystem through its own programmes, through curriculum and pedagogical innovations and through the development of holistic assessment frameworks while also shifting the narratives around the purpose of education. Dream a Dream’s work is spread across 7 Indian states with a reach of over 3.6 million children through strategic partnerships with state governments and collaborations with other non-profits and funders in India.
Role: Senior Program Associate, Partnerships – Karnataka
Reporting Manager: Associate Lead
Type: Full time
Location: Bangalore
Salary Per Annum: INR 9,96,000/-
Last date of application: 20th October
Role Summary:
As a Associate Manager in Dream a Dream’s South Hub, you will directly contribute to our state partnership in Karnataka by supporting the delivery of our System Demonstration work. You will be responsible for supporting on-ground program operations, building relationships with government stakeholders (teachers, government officials, and school stakeholders), and capturing insights from the field.
In addition to these responsibilities, you will also contribute to Dream a Dream’s Narrative Building vertical. You will be responsible for gathering and amplifying voices from the ground – capturing stories of transformation, conducting stakeholder interviews, drafting blogs, and supporting the execution of Karnataka narrative strategy.
You will bring energy, structure, empathy, and a facilitation mindset to enable young people, teachers, and systems to thrive.
Key Responsibilities:
- Documentation, Narrative Building, and Learning
- Document teacher journeys, school experiences, and system shifts through stories, case notes, and internal reports.
- Contribute to state-level reporting, monitoring internal dashboards, and reflections.
- Work closely with the State Lead to implement Karnataka narrative strategy.
- Collaborate with internal teams and external contributors to conduct interviews, write blogs, and surface authentic ground voices that reflect impact and insight.
- Collaborate with the Narrative Building and State teams to ensure stories and data align with broader organizational goals.
- Support in collecting and curating stories for public platforms, stakeholder facing communication, and other pieces of learning/reflection.
- Support in the implementation of the Life Skills Collaborative (LSC) strategy in Karnataka.
- Program Implementation and Facilitation
- Support on-ground operations of training, workshops, and reflective spaces with government stakeholders based on life skills and SEL.
- Support coordination and delivery of our work with the government w.r.t hands-on work and anchoring tasks related to Life skills and SEL.
- Capture insights from the field to adapt facilitation tools and approaches.
- Ensure timely logistics for training sessions and visits in collaboration with internal and external teams.
- Stakeholder Engagement and Communication
- Build respectful working relationships with government schoolteachers, mentors, school leaders, and district officials to create a credible image of Dream a Dream and its work.
- Represent Dream a Dream with professionalism, empathy, and clarity in school visits and meetings.
- Create feedback loops with stakeholders to ensure their voices inform program improvement.
- 5 years of experience working within government systems and managing strategic partnerships.
- Internal Collaboration and Culture
- Participate actively in team check-ins, learning spaces, and planning conversations.
- Share personal and professional reflections on vulnerability and openness.
- Bring ground-level perspectives to state and national conversations.
- Collaborate cross-functionally and contribute to org-wide learning and documentation efforts.
General Responsibilities:
- Contribute to achievement of strategic goals set by the organization.
- Promote Dream a Dream’s programs and initiatives.
- Participate in strategic planning, annual planning and budgeting process for the organization
- Being a small team, you would also be required to multitask between roles, as and when required by the organization for the furtherance of its goals.
- Understand, embody, and practice organizational values (Equity, Dignity, Inclusivity)
- Ensure that the work is aligned with the organization’s intention and goals.
- Assist in other related tasks that may be a part of Dream a Dream’s strategy in Karnataka.
- Any other work assigned by the reporting manager.
Core Competencies and Skills:
- Passion for working with government systems, knowledge partners (CSOs), young people, and schools.
- Some experience in facilitation or education/training preferred.
- 3 years of experience in hosting webinars/interviews, writing articles/blogs, and proofreading.
- Excellent interpersonal and communication skills (English and Kannada).
- Commitment to inclusion, empathy, and continuous learning.
- Comfort with Canva or Adobe tools will be an added advantage.
- Comfort with MS Office tools and willingness to learn simple data tracking/reporting tools.
- Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, both written and verbal, in English and Kannada.
You will thrive in this role if you:
- Are deeply reflective and believe in transformation over transaction.
- Understand government systems, systems change and can navigate power with empathy and invitation.
- Love balancing structure with fluidity and plans with emergence.
- Are passionate about building long-term public systems capability.
- Enjoy holding vision, complexity, nuance, and conflict as part of change work.
How to Apply:
Please email to mahesha.m@dreamadream.org with the job title in the subject line along with resume and cover letter.
Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
Dream a Dream is committed to upholding diversity and inclusion in our workplace, and we strongly encourage people from underrepresented groups, within the organization and outside, to apply to open positions. We embrace our employees’ differences of religion or belief, caste, race, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation gender, gender identity or expression, language differences, family or marital status, physical, mental and development abilities, social or economic class, education, work and behavioral styles, political affiliation, and other characteristics that make us unique.
