Manager, Education Programs, Sustainable Communities Initiative – West

Posted by on June 22, 2009

Job Announcement
Manager, Education Programs
Sustainable Communities Initiative – West

The Sustainable Communities Initiative – West Philadelphia (SCI-West) is an alliance of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and four West Philadelphia community organizations: The Partnership CDC, The People’s Emergency Center CDC, the University City District, and The Enterprise Center CDC. SCI-West seeks to improve communities in West Philadelphia by making them healthier, more competitive, and better connected with the economic mainstream through investments in physical development and social services.
The Enterprise Center CDC is seeking an Education Programs Manager to lead SCI-West’s efforts to build partnerships between community development corporations and public schools in SCI-West’s target area in West Philadelphia. This is a dynamic new pilot initiative that will grant the Education Programs Manager substantial opportunity to think creatively about how community development corporations can leverage their existing strengths in housing, community organizing, and economic development and use them to improve public education. In conjunction with our stakeholders, we have agreed on five outcomes of the initiative:

1. Students will see the relevance of education to their real-world employment prospects.
2. Students will learn how to become change agents in real-world learning situations.
3. Parents and community members will be actively engaged partners in their schools and hold schools accountable for results.
4. Schools will be centers for the delivery of community development services and education.
5. Schools and community development corporations will maintain an open dialogue about how they can work together to achieve both hard community development outcomes and educational outcomes.

To achieve these goals, we expect that the Education Programs Manager will develop and implement programming including:
1. Finding internship placements for high school students in our target area.
2. Brokering hands-on educational projects with a variety of community partners.
3. Starting a parent advocacy training class and recruiting parent organizers to strengthen home and school (i.e., PTA) associations or to form new ones where none exist.
4. Brokering the delivery of The Partnership CDC’s “Healthy Homes” program in area elementary schools. Healthy Homes equips parents with the tools to rid their homes of environmental contaminants (e.g., lead paint) that harm their children’s health and contribute to chronic absenteeism (see http://nhl.gov/offices/lead/hhi/index.cfm).
5. Convening a regular meeting of stakeholders to guide the initiative.

The ideal candidate will demonstrate experience:
• Working inside a school building
• Managing a project relating to education or community organizing from start to finish
• Building coalitions of diverse groups of non-profit stakeholders
• Interacting with grant-making foundations
• Working in a diverse community of neighbors and parents

Strong communicators who thrive when given the latitude to implement fresh, innovative community development programming are encouraged to send a resume and cover letter to Gabriel Mandujano, at
[email protected]. Applications must be received before 9am on July 6.