Communication and Professionalism Coach

About Onja

Onja is a social enterprise training underprivileged youth into world-class software developers.

We find the brightest students in Madagascar who can’t afford to continue their education, and train them in English language and software development. After just two-and-a-half years they are ready to work as remote front-end software developers in international tech teams.

Once in a job, our developers earn a good salary that helps them support their families and pay forward the opportunity to a new wave of students. They unlock exciting careers that fulfil their potential, and accelerate the development of their nation (see ‘How Onja Works’ below).

Our first cohort, ‘Wave 1’, consists of nineteen talented and committed graduates who are now working remotely for our partner companies in Europe and the US. With this immensely successful first cohort, and a proven social model, our goal is now to scale our impact: we aim to take on 360 new students over the next four years.

Our fast-growing team is very united, committed to the mission, and hardworking, but we also maintain a relaxed and peaceful atmosphere that you’ll find everywhere in Madagascar.

Onja is located in Toamasina, a lively city with beautiful beaches, nice restaurants, and with plenty to do and see. Toamasina is Madagascar’s second largest city (population 300,000) yet is surrounded by plenty of natural beauty, and even has a national park nearby.

About the role

From 2020 to 2021, we developed and delivered a full-time English and software development course that allowed nineteen students to progress from absolute beginners to industry-ready software developers, and they are now all working in US/European tech teams remotely from Madagascar. While our developers were still students, they also received considerable instruction in professionalism which has made a big difference to their current job performance and success. While professionalism is sometimes overlooked, we believe that these soft skills are crucial for success in life and work. Our challenge now is to scale our organisation, bringing opportunities to hundreds, moving to thousands of students.

Your mission as our Communication and Professionalism Coach is to take our existing professionalism course and build on it, creating a highly scalable digital course for our future students.

Your responsibilities include:

• Building a course focusing primarily on workplace professionalism and communication in a scalable online-style programme. How this can be achieved is very open and will depend on you and some input from the wider team. We imagine it’s likely to include the following:
• Finding existing online material and incorporate useful material into the course
• Creating engaging video lectures, learning activities and course content
• Collaborate with our existing Communication Coach, incorporating their specific experience into your course design.
• Deciding on the criteria used to assess students’ performance and develop assessments.
• As we are a startup social enterprise there will likely be opportunities to wear many hats, contributing to other parts of the organisation.

This is a pivotal role for Onja at this exciting time. We are poised to grow fast and our dream is to train thousands of new students each year. You will be setting the foundations for waves of youth that will follow in future years.

Requirements

• Twelve month commitment (this ensures sufficient time to make a truly meaningful impact) with potential to renew/extend.
• Excellent English communication skills
• Experience working in professional environments
• Experience in the private sector is a plus

How Onja Works

Onja is a social enterprise with a sustainable model:

1. Search for brilliant minds who would otherwise be limited to low-paid, unfulfilling careers.
2. Students receive two years of English and software development instruction. Meet a developer here: https://onja.org/blog
3. Graduates earn (and continue learning) at our outsourcing enterprise.
4. All profits are used to train the next wave of students and the cycle begins again.