Strategic Communications Summer Intern
Rising Academies, Ghana
Job Description
The context:
Across the developing world, more children than ever are in school but they are not learning. A recent study estimated that less than 1% of school children in Sub-Saharan Africa attend a school where the teaching meets basic standards of quality. At Rising Academies, we’re changing that, and we want your help. Our mission is to create the best schools and the most powerful teaching and learning tools for the people that need it most. We’re one of the fastest-growing quality-focused education companies in Africa, and a Certified B Corp.
About us:
We own and operate our own great value private schools, partner with governments to improve the quality of public school systems, and use our content and technology to help other education providers. Founded in Sierra Leone in 2014, we provided emergency education to children kept out of school by the Ebola Epidemic before opening our first school in April 2015. Today, we serve more than 250,000 students across more than 900 schools in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana and now Rwanda.
Through great curriculum, intensive teacher coaching and actionable data, we help teachers and school leaders bring quality to every classroom. And we get results: independent studies show Rising students make more than twice the progress of their peers in comparable schools.
We have recently closed our Series A funding round and won a multi-year, multi-million dollar grant to accelerate the development of our digital ed-tech solutions for low-income students across the globe. Our ‘Bambai’ suite of digital tools already includes a school information system, school observation tool, chatbot tutor, accelerated learning program and teacher coaching app. This is just the start. We want to expand our range of digital products to help improve the quality of education for millions of students around the world. If you want to make a difference to the lives of teachers, students and parents, then we are the right place for you.
About the role:
Rising Academies turns 10 years old this year and we are using this milestone as an opportunity to reflect on our journey and to refresh some of our core materials. The Strategic Communications Intern would be working directly with our CEO on a key component of this refresh: the Rising Purple Book. This book, published in 2018, is given to all new joiners at Rising as the embodiment of the Rising Way - the principles that guide our culture and everything we do at Rising. We want to update it to reflect both the evolution that Rising has undergone since the Purple Book was created, and all of the important work ahead of us in this next phase.
The Strategic Communications Intern will:
- Travel to all four of our operating countries to collect stories and conduct interviews with Rising employees and community stakeholders.
- Collaborate with our CEO and across Rising’s teams to understand and be able to reflect Rising’s values and the work that Rising does to open doors and change lives.
- Draft, revise, and refine a new edition of the Rising Purple Book for distribution across the organization.
Location and reporting:
This is a full-time summer internship, based in Accra, Ghana, with travel to Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and Liberia. This role will be reporting to the CEO and supported by the Head of People and Talent.
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. The target start-date will be June 3, 2024.
Requirements
Qualification and Experience:
- You have proven journalistic talent, as evidenced by experience in journalism, a relevant undergraduate major, or experience on a student newspaper.
- You have an eye for a good story, know how to talk to people to get the story, and once you’ve got it you can write it in an engaging, compelling way for a non-technical audience.
- Experience working in a developing country is a plus.
- Experience working in education is a plus
About You:
This is a hands-on position, and we are looking for people who don’t mind rolling up their sleeves to get things done. This internship would particularly suit candidates who are interested in pursuing a career in global education, social enterprise, venture philanthropy or impact investing after graduation, and would like to gain first-hand experience of the challenges involved in scaling-up a young social enterprise.
- Strong commitment to the mission and organisational ethos of Rising Academies
- Outstanding people skills and ability to work across boundaries
- Highly organized with excellent attention to detail
- Self-starting, proactive, and hands-on problem solver
- Great energy and work ethic
- Resilient, determined and good-h