Position Title: Senior Manager, Sports and Competitions, Asia Pacific Region
Location: Singapore
Department: Asia Pacific Region
Reports to: President & Managing Director, Asia Pacific Region
Date: May 2024
This position is full time.
Organization Overview:
Special Olympics is founded on the belief that persons with intellectual disabilities learn, enjoy, and benefit from participation in year-round individual and team sports training and competition. Today, more than 6 million children and adults with intellectual disabilities participate in over 100,000 games and competitions in over 190 countries. Special Olympics International (SOI) leads this work through offices in 7 locations around the world. The Asia Pacific Regional Office is located in Singapore and is responsible for 35 countries spanning Afghanistan, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Japan and the Pacific region.
Position Summary:
As a member of staff with Special Olympics Asia Pacific, your role as Senior Manager, Sports & Competitions is to establish good quality sports programmes for people with intellectual disabilities across the Asia Pacific region through Special Olympics country programs. You will need to build a working knowledge of sports delivery as it relates to our 35 country programs and support the design and delivery of activities, events, partnerships, and projects that allow Special Olympics and disability sport to flourish in each country. The position of Senior Manager, Sports - Asia Pacific is full-time and required to pursue the 2024-2030 strategic plan with oversight of 4 distinct areas of Sports development and delivery for the Asia Pacific region:
· Multi-year Sports Development Planning
· Coach Development
· Sports Partnerships
· Competition Development and International Sports Event Readiness
The Senior Manager manages a small team of Sports Specialists to deliver this strategy, reporting directly to the President and Managing Director and working closely with various colleagues within the Asia Pacific region and across the world.
Disposition:
You must be a self-starter who is looking to stretch and develop their skills constantly. You must be willing to adopt a growth mindset and enjoy working in a fast-paced and fluid environment with people from a variety of different backgrounds. We are looking for an individual who likes a challenge and is able to work across multiple projects at once with a genuine flair for enterprise within a social/community context.
Primary Responsibilities:
Sports Capacity and Planning
· Ensure that all National Programs achieve basic standards of sports delivery across the region and progress along a consistent ongoing roadmap of improvement
· Establish a robust system of profiling and tracking the sports performance of all National Programs in the region
· Guide the gathering of sports-based data across the Region.
· Support the development of good quality governance across each Program’s sports activities through management of annual sports planning
· Develop ways of sharing best practices between Programs to support a culture of excellence and collaboration using workshops, Leadership Conferences and other events as a platform
· Manage Sports Grants to Programs – establishing an overview of awards, reporting, performance and evaluation
Coach Development
· Support the rollout of global Coach Development standards
· Support Asia Pacific country programs through the creation of tools and knowledge training sessions to improve Sports Quality in coaching standards across Special Olympics sports
· Support the design and delivery of global coach development projects supporting country programs to improve coaching standards and the athlete experience at all levels of the organization
· Support tracking, review, evaluation and feedback on the action plans.
Sports Partnerships
· Seek and work with external partners that can contribute to the delivery of Special Olympics sports activities
· Oversee the development of effective relationships between Country Programs and Sports Partners across the region
· Support the design and activation of sports partnerships across the region
Competition Management
· Build on the introduction of competition readiness standards to ensure all country programs institute protocols that put athletes and delegations in the best position to smoothly participate in any Special Olympics competitions at all levels of the movement
· Oversee the adoption of a regional competition sanctioning system
· Promote the sharing of best practices between programs to improve competition hosting capabilities across the region
· Support the development of a regional games bidding and evaluation processes
· Oversee the delivery of competition management workshops
Additional Responsibilities
· Support the continued development and engagement of the Regional Sports Input Council and the SOAP Board to strengthen sports delivery.
· Support SOI in the design of projects and activities by providing insight into regional capabilities.
· Any other duties as requested from time to time
Essential Skills & Qualifications:
· Team player ready to work within a high-pressure environment with limited resources
· Bachelor’s Degree in Sports Management or equivalent
· Proven Project and Event Management experience
· Knowledge of Grant Report writing and Administration
· Multi-stakeholder and partner stewardship experience
· Strong desire to widen sports participation for underprivileged and excluded communities
· Ability and demonstrated desire to collaborate internationally
· Fluent in speaking and writing English
· Strong skills in innovation, collaboration, problem-solving, teamwork, and vision
· Sound planning, organization, coordination skills
· Diplomacy skills and familiarity with a variety of cultures
· Excellent communications skills, both verbal and written
· Excellent ability to use MS Office applications
· Able to join meetings at hours outside of standard working hours
Desirable Qualifications:
· Master’s degree in a Sports related discipline
· 2 years of professional experience working with Special Olympics or a similar sports development organization
· Experience as volunteer in the non-profit sector
· Experience as a Special Olympics Staff Member or Volunteer
· Knowledge of Sports Development frameworks
· Experience with project management systems such as SmartSheets
· This person should have a working knowledge of the Asia Pacific region and sports delivery within it
