Recruiting for Project Manager Role for Makhad Trust
January 2025
Job Specification
The Makhad Trust is looking for someone to replace the current Project Manager and join our small team. The role of Project Manager for the Makhad Trust involves office work in UK, including writing funding applications, writing and sending reports to funders, and some administration of the trust. There is also planning, organising and completing four trips a year to Sinai, Egypt where our practical work takes place.
Background
The Makhad Trust is a UK registered charity working to sustain the environment and natural heritage of the Bedouin tribes of the Sinai Mountains and Desert in Egypt by renewing access to water and supporting their traditional lifestyles. See the Charitable Objects below. The Bedouin are a marginalised community, who are barred from many forms of employment yet receive little or no help from Egyptian authorities. A 15+ year drought dried up wells, then collapse of the tourism industry in 2013 bought unemployment, and huge floods have filled in wells. Access to drinking water is difficult. The Trust gives support through restoration of wells for drinking and growing food, and building small dams, and small projects such as beekeeping training, herb growing and carpentry training. Restored wells provide drinking water and ability to grow crops for eating, promoting health and well being, and for income. 600+ wells have been restored and 400 more are waiting. Our aim is to restore 50 wells a year.
The Trust is a very small charity run by six trustees, and the Project Manager, assisted by a Fundraiser and an Accounts Manager.
Project Manager’s Remit
The Project Manager’s work in UK is usually two days a week and consists of applying to charities and trust funds for funding, writing reports on the work completed for each funder, and organising the trips in Sinai. Details of every well are entered on a series of spreadsheets to track progress, funds, money spent, which funder and more besides. The Project Manager works with the board of trustees which meets about three times a year, but mainly answers to the Chair of Trustees and the Director of Makhad Trust.
The Sinai work takes place over two weeks four times a year and consists of visiting ongoing well restorations, assessing new wells for restoration, cataloguing the costs by the well owner, and paying the well owner for the work done. While some wells are near roads and with easy access, other wells require a 3 hour walk in the high mountains to reach, and some wells are on precipitous steep mountainsides with no visible path. It is a very rugged landscape. All payments and costs spent on wells, plus information about the restorations are logged at the well site and then information entered into spreadsheets at the end of the day. There will also be visits to the various other small projects we facilitate. The Project Manager will be accompanied at all times by our Sinai Manager who is a Bedouin from the local town and who will guide with local knowledge.
Working in UK
In the UK the project manager’s work can be carried out from home, however, regular visits are necessary to the office in Cheltenham to meet with our Fundraiser, our Accounts Manager and our Chair of Trustees, so it is preferable that the successful candidate lives in easy commuting distance.
The work is on a consultancy basis, so the selected candidate will be self-employed and working part-time.
Remuneration is £130 a day, working 2 days a week. During trips to Sinai, pay is the same, ie pay for 2 days a week even when working the whole trip. Our charity is very small so we have to keep overheads as low as possible. However all travel expenses are covered of course.
No prior knowledge of well digging or engineering is required as it is mostly simple work and practical common sense is sufficient.
Essential skills
Proficient with Numbers/Excel spreadsheets, able to write reports, funding applications and newsletters, good at planning, can manage risk, general practical ability. Must be numerate. Can self direct work and happy to work and travel alone.
Essential Attributes
Understanding of different cultural norms, not risk averse, mountain fit (or experience of trekking in mountains and camping) and sure footed, team player, good leadership skills, self-reliant, adaptable and able to replan on the hoof, totally trustworthy and honest, tact and diplomacy. Able to work in the summer heat in Egypt. Curiosity and eager to learn, but knows when to ask advice or refer problems.
Desired Skills
Comfortable in one’s own company but sociable and able to work with all types of people and characters, practical aptitude, management experience. Previous experience of working with a charity.
Beneficial Attributes
Ability to speak some Arabic. Experience of working with Apple Mac computers.
The applicant will have a laptop that they can travel with for record keeping and preferably an ipad for making reports in the field.
Applications by CV with two references, one must be a work reference and the other a character reference. Possible Candidates will be called for interview in the New Year.
Applications to;-
Helen Cranston helencranston@makhad.org
Confirmation of the selected candidate will be made after participation in a Sinai Journey in the Spring if the application is approved.
The Makhad Trust https://www.makhad.org/
An insight in to the role of PM can be found by reading some of the quarterly newsletters on the website.
Charitable objects
3.1 To promote for the benefit of the public the protection of the natural, cultural and spiritual heritage of the nomadic regions of the world, in particular but not exclusively in Sinai and in Tibet, by such charitable means as the trustees see fit
3.2 To relieve those in need of such relief living in the nomadic regions of the world, in particular but not exclusively in Sinai and in Tibet, by the provision of financial, technical and other assistance
3.3 To advance the education of the public in the cultural and environmental heritage of the nomadic regions of the world, in particular but not exclusively in Sinai and Tibet, by such charitable means as the trustees determine from time to time.
*To promote for the benefit of the public the protection of the natural, cultural and spiritual heritage of the nomadic regions of the world in particular in Sinai by such charitable means as the trustees see fit
*To relieve those in need of such relief in particular in Sinai by the provision of financial, technical and other assistance
*To advance the education of the public in the cultural and environmental heritage of nomadic regions of the world by charitable means as the trustees determine