About APP:
The African Prisons Project (APP) is a group of people passionately committed to improving access to healthcare, education, justice and rehabilitation for prisoners in Africa. We aim to restore the dignity of those we serve by helping to provide humane conditions and services which help them to regain their dignity. We build and refurbish prison medical and educational facilities to provide innovative services and work to change the attitudes of the societies we serve when it comes to criminal justice issues. We work with Prison Service leaders who wish to develop services and policies in line with our mission and welcome our support. We pursue these changes in a two pronged approach.
1. By focusing on rising stars and senior management of the prison services, providing them with the skills needed to reform and improve prison systems.
2. By providing scholarships and training to prisoners and prisons staff pursuing legal degrees or diplomas through distance learning programmes, to support them act as educators and legal advisers to prisoners and to then take this knowledge of the law to the poorest communities upon release.
Job Summary: The Leadership Programme Director will steer our strategy around Leadership Development. The successful candidate will be responsible for leading various programs outlined below.
Key Duties and Responsibilities:
1. Prisoner and Prison Officer Legal Studies:
· Develop a core group of legally trained individuals in prisons who can drive change to access justice for prisoners.
· The incumbent will increase the number of successful appeals, bail applications and outcomes at trial.
· Improve the legal knowledge of prisoners and prison staff, create instructors amongst the convicted to help inform others and thereby demonstrate prisoners’ ability to have a direct positive impact on their lives and the lives of other prisoners.
· Provide marketable skills to prisoners through legal training to improve their job prospects upon release.
· Create an increasing number of future lawyers, law students and paralegals with first-hand knowledge of the challenges faced in prison.
· Get ex-prisoners in posts to lead change at a pastoral level e.g. as politicians, lawyers, judges etc.
2. Learning Journeys for Prison Staff:
· Continuously improve the skills of prison staff in order to increase the overall skills level of mid to high level prison staff.
· Develop officers capable of training fellow staff on the issues which they studied while in the United Kingdom.
· Identify areas of need within the prison system and to develop capable prison officers who are readily able to solve these problems internally.
· Equip prison staff to change policy and practice nationally.
3. Masters Courses:
· Improve the skills of prison staff in an effort to increase overall skills among mid to high level officers.
· To establish officers capable of training fellow staff on the issues that they studied
· To identify areas of need within the prison system and create capable prison officers who are readily able to solve these problems internally
· To build up a body of research (through master’s dissertations) on African prison issues and use this to influence change
· To develop new and sustainable ideas within prison services, contribute to reforming existing systems.
4. Strategy, Planning and Management Objectives:
· To submit to the UK office the quarterly and monthly budget including overseeing the finances for this programme.
· Manage the procurement process.
· Oversee the human resources of staff (globally) who work on this programme including leading, recruiting and appraising all staff.
· Plan and implement annual volunteer plan for the Leadership Development Programme.
· Act as the contact person for the media and to generate stories on our work in Kenya. To contribute to the social media of the organisation.
· Establish and maintain a strong cooperative relationship with prison service at all levels (HQ and Prisons) in Kenya and any other East African country that the LD programmes expands into.
5. Networking:
· Building a network of change makers.
· Bringing them together online and in person
· In charge of developing mechanism for those who have been through the programmes to work together and support each other.
Qualifications, Skills and Experience:
· The applicant should preferably have a minimum of five years project planning and change management experience.
· Excellent track record in delivering projects in multiple countries.
· A minimum of five years professional experience, ideally with other education/leadership development programmes.
· Comprehensive working knowledge and experience of humanitarian and development sector and/or social enterprise/academia.
· Highly fluent in English.
· Proven problem solving and strategic planning capability with creative skills.
· Excellent communication and inter-personal skills.
· Ability to meet deadlines under pressure
· Strong reporting, monitoring and evaluation skills
How to Apply:
All suitably qualified and interested candidates are encouraged to send their applications including an updated CV and Covering Letter to:
Jessica Harper, Office & HR Manager
Address: Unit 16, 95 Miles Road, Mitcham, Surrey, CR4 3FH
Email to: jessicaharper@africanprisons.org
Deadline: 15th August 2015