Programme Manager 522 views
Job Overview
About Us
African Adventures creates life-changing international volunteering experiences for UK based schools, colleges and charities, enabling groups to make a meaningful difference in communities across Ghana, Kenya, Zanzibar and The Gambia. Working in partnership across more than 50 schools, we deliver educational, cultural and community-focused programmes that have a lasting impact on both participants and the communities we support.
We’re a unique organisation, combining the expertise of a travel company with the purpose of an international development organisation. We deliver life-changing volunteering experiences for schools, colleges and charities, providing a fully managed travel service that includes everything from flights and accommodation to pre-departure support and fundraising guidance. At the same time, we work closely with our partner schools across Africa to improve school facilities, expand educational opportunities and create lasting, positive impact for the communities we support.
About The Role
As Programme Manager, you’ll lead and develop our in-country operations, ensuring the safe, effective and high-quality delivery of our volunteer travel and community development programmes. Working closely with our UK leadership team, you’ll oversee programme delivery, lead a cross functional team, build strong relationships with local stakeholders, and ensure our operations meet the high standards expected by both African Adventures Ltd and the African Adventures Foundation.
As the senior representative for African Adventures in-country, you’ll play a key role in driving operational excellence, supporting organisational growth, and shaping the future of our programmes. You’ll help create life-changing experiences for volunteers while delivering meaningful, sustainable impact for our partner schools and communities.
About You
We’re looking for an experienced and collaborative leader who understands the local context and is passionate about delivering exceptional programmes that make a difference.
You’ll be confident leading diverse teams, managing multiple priorities, and building trusted relationships with government officials, community leaders, schools and suppliers.
You’ll combine strong operational and financial management skills with commitment to customer service, compliance and continuous improvement. Most importantly, you’ll share our values and be motivated by the opportunity to support sustainable community development while working closely with colleagues across both our in-country and UK teams.
Responsibilities
- Line manages the programme management team in all respects including recruitment, performance monitoring, disciplinaries, welfare, personal
- Responsible for delivering the country plan set by the UK executive and inputting into the future direction as
- Responsible for ensuring overall compliance to African Adventures Ltd and Foundation policy, procedures and standards right across the programme that are delivered in line with the Service Level Agreement (SLA).
- Responsible for ensuring that the programme complies with all the accreditation and body requirements such as the School Travel Forum, ABTA, ATOL, UK Charity Commission as directed by the UK Business Operations Manager and Foundation Manager.
- Provide ‘second line’ support for Senior Trip Host and Senior Driver on issues management where they escalate: day to day delivering the itinerary and high-quality customer
- Leading to ensure collaborative and joined up ways of working between UK and programme
- Accountable for the ensuring that the management and their teams conduct all data entry in a timely and accurate fashion as per procedures for both Company and Foundation.
- Responsible for ensuring all programme departments deliver planned, timely, accurate and customer service focused itineraries and group services in all
- Responsible for the assessment and ongoing engagement of new and existing Partner Schools to the standards laid out in the Partnership Agreement
- Responsible for providing the Foundation in-country resource requirements and data to support planned and impactful capacity development work across the
- Responsible for ensuring accurate and timely financial reporting and stewardship of
- Responsible for all programme reporting requirements to the UK leadership teams as
- Drive change and improvements across the programme ensuring a sustainable, fit for purpose, customer service focused culture and operations delivery is
- Responsible for leading on the engagement with local authorities, suppliers and community leaders ensuring good relations, a coordinated approach and smooth delivery of company operations, on behalf of the UK Executive in their
- Part of an on-call system providing out of hours team support for issues and delivery of the Emergency Response Plan.
- Any other ad hoc tasks as
Collaboration
We are all ‘one team’ and need to work as such, to deliver the role you will be expected to effectively work with:
- In Programme – Senior Trip Host, Senior Driver, Foundation Coordinator, Office Manager, Trip Hosts.
- In the UK – Business Operations Manager, Travel Operations Manager, Foundation Manager, Programme Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Executive Officer, HCS Officer, HR Officer, Marketing Manager, Finance Manager C
- External to African Adventures – Local Authorities, Government Officials, Bank Managers, Hotel/Tour/Catering/Transport suppliers, Senior Partner School Officials/Directors, Community leaders, AAF Donors.
Essential:
- Fluent in English, Mandinka, and Wolof – representing the communities we operate in.
- Highly competent in Microsoft (Outlook/365) and communication (Teams/WhatsApp)
- Exceptional communication, planning, coordination skillset
- Experience in financial bookkeeping, buying, Specifically, Xero or similar (ie Quick Books).
- Experience in office
Desirable:
- Qualifications in finance, accountancy or
- Experience in personal assistance to leaders
- Driving license
Any offer of employment to the successful candidate shall be subject to references from previous employer(s) and the outcome of a police clearance certificate.
Start date for the successful candidate: 05th October 2026.
All application documents should be sent to: apply@gamjobs.com and cc jobs@gamjobs.com.
Application deadline: On a rolling basis!
