School Social Worker

Overview: The Akanksha Foundation is a nonprofit organization with a mission to provide children from low-income communities with a high-quality education, enabling them to maximize their potential and transform their lives. Akanksha works primarily in the field of education, addressing formal education by initiating school reform through its School Project. The Akanksha School Project represents our first effort to work with the formal school system in Mumbai and Pune. It is an effort by Akanksha to extend its activities in the field of education, leveraging our experiences from nearly twenty years of work with children from low-income communities to improve the quality of learning in public schools. Specifically, Akanksha hopes to provide inputs in the fields of teaching, extracurricular activities, and community engagement that will significantly enhance the learning opportunities for children in these schools, demonstrating what is possible for children from low-income communities to achieve given the right opportunities. Currently, Akanksha runs 21 schools in partnership with the government in Mumbai, Pune, and Nagpur and aims to start more schools in the next academic year. Overview of the Social Work team: The approach of the social work team is "to support and empower children to lead safe, healthy, and happy lives through strong partnerships that enrich the child’s environment.” The social workers support and empower children by working closely with the parents to increase their investment in their child’s life—education, health, and emotional well-being—bettering the lives children lead in the community. This is done through community awareness drives, partnering with other organizations, and initiating projects in the community; focusing on the health of children through medical camps, offering guidance for medical concerns, and increasing awareness in children and their parents about health, hygiene, and sanitation; capacity building of the School Management Committee (SMC) to support the school during events, bettering the services offered to students, and increasing parental investment in the school; working closely with students to increase their awareness about personal safety and health; supporting victims of sexual offenses and their parents to heal; and working closely with teachers to increase their understanding of families and communities the students come from, so as to provide a context to the teachers for their interactions with the students and their parents. The counselors and social workers collaborate to support the school in the youth development and community engagement goals of the school development framework. To do this, they work in partnership with the school leader, the teachers, and the network support team members. Roles and Responsibilities of Social Workers: 1. STUDENT LEARNING AND WELFARE ● Planning and executing the Admission process ● Maintaining average school attendance ● Control student dropout rate and academic continuity ● Maintaining Student Documentation ● Health & Nutrition along with Mid day meal distribution ● Socio-emotional support to students ● Child Safety 2. COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT ● Knowledge and Understanding of the community ● School Community Engagement Goal ● NGO networking sourcing 3. PARENTS AS PARTNERS ● Parent engagement ● Parent welfare 4. SMC (Capacity building and involvement of the members) ● Building the capacity of the SMC members ● Engaging the SMC in school-wide initiatives ● Engaging the SMC in community level initiatives 5. HELPER GROWTH AND EMPOWERMENT ● School support ● Building the capacity of helpers 6. GOVERNMENT LIAISONING ● Maintain healthy relations with the various government agencies ● Government documentation compliance Experience: ● 1-2 years of experience working with communities and children Knowledge/Skills: ● Strong Oral and Written communication skills ● Good planning and organizing skills ● Understanding of English, Hindi and Marathi (verbal and written) ● Knowledge and understanding of social issues ● Proficient in MS Office (Excel, word and PowerPoint) Job Types: Full-time, Permanent Pay: ₹30,000.00 - ₹32,000.00 per month Benefits: • Health insurance • Provident Fund Ability to commute/relocate: • Nagpur, Maharashtra: Reliably commute or planning to relocate before starting work (Required) Application Question(s): • How many years of experience do you have working with children or adolescents in a school? • What is the highest level of education you have completed in Social Work? Work Location: In person