Position Overview

Educate! is seeking a superb Finance Officer to work in our operations department in Rwanda. As a Finance Officer, you will be supporting Logistics, Procurement, Finance and administration tasks in Educate!. She/he will be responsible for maintaining accounts records in compliance to Educate! procedures, the provision of logistical and administrative support, and other various operations projects within Educate Rwanda. The role involves managing cash flows, mobile money platform and related funds reimbursement.

The Finance Officer will work closely with the Finance Specialist and Operations Officer to provide Rwanda monthly financials and BVAs. He/she will also collaborate closely with the program team and the field staff to generate new ideas in finance. The Finance Officer will report to the Finance Specialist.

About Educate!

What if there was a way to measurably change the trajectory of the lives of youth across Africa? Since its launch in 2009, Educate! has worked to do just this, delivering outsized impacts at scale and at disproportionately low cost, towards the aim of addressing youth unemployment. As a disruptive, nonprofit social enterprise, our team leverages an obsession with evidence and entrepreneurial drive to tackle one of our planet’s greatest challenges — unlocking the potential of its youngest continent.

Educate! Prepares youth in Africa with the skills to succeed in today’s economy. We’ve created a 100-hour experience that delivers the most essential skills youth need to transition to work, combining training, mentorship, and practical experience starting a business. We deliver this experience to youth in 3 ways: directly to schools, integrated into education systems, and through bootcamps for out-of-school youth.

All three delivery channels have been validated by several independent evaluations, and to date, more than 200,000 youth have been meaningfully impacted by this model across Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya. Along the way, Educate! has become the largest youth skills provider in East Africa.

Educate! is a team of over 160 largely African staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We prioritize building an engaging, fulfilling, and growth-oriented work environment. 50% of our top 30 leaders have been with us for over 5 years, 10+ alumni have started other organizations and 5 current or former team members were Acumen Fund East Africa fellows.

We have been backed by top foundations such as Imaginable Futures, Big Bang Philanthropy, and Echidna Giving. Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize and a 2015 WISE Award, and has been highlighted by Bill Gates, in the World Bank’s S4YE’s Impact Portfolio, an Al Jazeera documentary, BBC, and The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies in their global scaling education learning initiative. Educate! was also selected by the UN’s Generation Unlimited as 1 of 20 innovative youth solutions and by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as a Goalkeepers Accelerator.

Educate!’s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year. Our plan is to grow our reach 3x over the next 3 years.

Performance Objectives

Finance (50%)

• Prepare journal vouchers
• Enter all journal entries in the accounting software
• Reconcile ledger accounts
• Produce daily transaction posting reports
• Receiving and verifying invoices and preparing vouchers
• Receiving and verifying requisitions and preparing vouchers
• Receiving and verifying accountabilities and reconciling staff advance account
• Paying vendors and responding to inquiries regarding finance
• Payment initiation for mobile money and supporting on the bank when necessary
• Supporting in audit processes

Logistics (25%)

• Providing support to the Operations officer to Coordinate training events as required, including but not limited to, pre-booking calls to venues, travel arrangement, providing supplies and materials, equipment and the point person at events.
• Provide support to the program team by arranging logistics for events and meetings held in program districts to ensure that they are properly organized and conducted.
• Book, schedule, and coordinate vehicles when needed
• Conduct periodic inventory checks of office assets and equipment and oversee repairs

Administration (25%)

• Maintain detailed records of supporting documentation for all payment transactions
• Ensure all documents are stamped and filed appropriately
• Provide support to HR where needed
• Act as office messenger to all departments as needed
• Act as Educate! Receptionist when need be
• Support Office Assistant in office procurement needs

Qualifications

• BSc. in Finance, Accounting or Business Administration with proficiency in Ms Excel and Quickbooks.
• Finance & Accounting experience working in a non-profit environment.
• 2 years of experience in finance and accounting auditing, and financial analysis (including gathering, evaluating, presenting, and reporting financial information to management and external stakeholders).
• Solid experience in coordinating audit activities and managing reporting, budget development and analysis, accounts payable and receivable, general ledger, payroll taxes, and accounting.
• Entrepreneurial drive, proven ability to take ownership, lead the team’s combined learning and a collaborative, data-oriented approach to problem-solving.
• Possess and display high ethical and business standards.
• Fits our Five Cultural Tenets (see What is Educate! About? below); Learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here.

Terms 

• Compensation will be competitive for the social enterprise sector and commensurate with experience.
• Benefits include a generous vacation policy and medical insurance.
• This position will be based in Kigali, Rwanda.

Why You Will Brag About Working At Educate!

• We’ve got the impact.
• Educate! is designed for scale. We quadrupled operations in 2014, going from 54 to more than 200 schools served. We carefully measure our outcomes, and — here’s the best part — we are maintaining quality at four times the size.
• We believe in local leadership — 96% of our staff is African.
• Our model has gone nationwide in Uganda — Educate!’s model is now incorporated into the national curriculum and exams, impacting many thousands more students than we can reach directly.
• Educate is a well-oiled learning machine. We built our model by methodically testing hundreds of assumptions and we are constantly experimenting, evaluating, and improving.
• We’re honored that luminaries and leaders like Oliver Wonekha, the Ugandan Ambassador to the US, and Ann Veneman, a former Secretary of Agriculture and head of Unicef, believe in us enough to have joined our advisory board.

Application deadline is July 11th 2022. 

What Is Educate! About?

We’re ambitious. Are you? Educate! is growing fast, so new opportunities are opening up and expanding all the time. We’re inspired by people with drive, and we love to help them reach their full potential. We expect everyone at Educate! to contribute above and beyond their job description, grow their skills, and advance their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey.

1. We Put Youth First – The youth we serve come first. Always. In everything. That means we wake up thinking of ways we can serve youth even better and get the highest impact out of every dollar that we spend. It means Educate! doesn’t own a single vehicle, because we’d rather take the bus if it means one more student can participate. It means making every decision like the future depends on it — because if we get our way, it does.
2. We Are Always Learning – When you work at Educate!, educating yourself is part of your job too. We encourage every employee to find the best book on management; share the latest article on graphic design; bring in your favorite college mentor; or meet the researcher pushing the edge of the field. We are always thirsty for knowledge and love to share.
3. We Only Solve a Problem Once – We are allergic to band-aids so we love the person who brings the new system to solve the problem for good, even problems we haven’t recognized yet.
4. We Are Flexible – We thrive on change — we’re driving it. We are growing every day, so we have to adapt quickly to meet new challenges, and our team keeps up.
5. We Exceed Expectations – We assume we can achieve the impossible because we already have, year after year. We want our staff to create your own challenges, ask the toughest questions, and dream scary big!

Every person at Educate! — from interns to the executive director — is evaluated by how they live up to these five cultural tenets. They are at the core of how we achieve our mission and why we work as well as we do.

Educate is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all who interact in our community.  In creating this environment, we encourage people from a variety of cultures, backgrounds and life experiences to join our diverse team.