Project Associate - 2026

Terms of Reference

Role: Project Associate - Hindupur, Andhra Pradesh 

Swasti is a global public health organisation committed to improving health outcomes for vulnerable communities by strengthening systems, building capacities, and enabling community-centered solutions. With a mission to add 100 million healthy days by 2030, Swasti works across multiple states in India and several countries globally, partnering with governments, communities, and institutions to address complex health and development challenges.

About the Project

Globally, the ILO estimates that heat stress contributes to nearly 23 million workplace injuries and 19,000 deaths each year, underscoring the urgent need to treat extreme heat as a serious occupational health and safety risk. For apparel and textile workers, prolonged exposure to heat can increase the risk of dehydration, fatigue, heat exhaustion, fainting, reduced concentration, and workplace accidents.

It is in response to this growing risk that the Heat-Resilient Workforce Project has been designed to address these challenges, under the aegis of Health@Work model. This project is a worker health and climate resilience initiative aimed at protecting apparel and textile workers from extreme heat-related harm across industrial clusters in India. The project focuses on embedding heat safety into everyday factory operations through Heat Action Plans, worker and supervisor training, early-warning dashboards, and practical workplace protections such as hydration, rest, cooling, and referral systems.

Swasti, with multistakeholders, will work with factories, district administrations, industry associations, brands, and technical partners etc to build a cluster-level model for coordinated heat preparedness and implementation. The initiative seeks to strengthen worker health, safety, and agency while creating a tested, evidence-backed Heat-Resilient Workforce Model that can be replicated across other labour-intensive supply chains.l

Key Responsibilities

1. Responsible for day-to-day field execution of the Heat-Resilient Workforce Project across assigned factories in the Ananthapur / Hindupur industrial cluster, under the guidance of the Cluster Manager.
2. Responsible for factory-level activity coordination with HR teams, welfare officers, supervisors, worker representatives, and other factory stakeholders to ensure planned activities are scheduled and completed as per the agreed workplan.
3. Responsible for rolling out factory readiness assessments, worker mobilisation, training logistics, workplace heat-safety activities, feedback collection, and follow-up actions at the factory level.
4. Responsible for worker-facing implementation activities, including worker trainings, Climate Care Champion mobilisation, peer-led health education sessions, heat-risk awareness activities, and field follow-ups.
5. Responsible for identifying, onboarding, and regularly engaging Climate Care Champions within assigned factories to support early identification of heat-related risks, first response, referrals, and preventive health promotion.
6. Responsible for factory-level documentation, including attendance records, training reports, field visit notes, meeting minutes, worker feedback summaries, activity trackers, and photo documentation as per project requirements.
7. Responsible for routine data collection and field-level monitoring for baseline, midline, endline, worker feedback, implementation fidelity, workplace measures, and Climate Care Champion activities, in coordination with the MEAL team.
8. Responsible for following up with factories to ensure agreed workplace heat-safety measures are implemented, including hydration, rest, cooling, first response, referral pathways, heat-risk communication, and worker feedback mechanisms.
9. Responsible for coordinating factory-level referrals and linkages for workers requiring heat-related first response, follow-up care, ESIC or government health services, and other relevant heat-health support.
10. Responsible for tracking field-level issues, implementation delays, worker concerns, factory-level barriers, and operational risks, and escalating them to the Cluster Manager with clear updates and suggested actions.

Qualification

A graduate degree in social work, public health, community development, social sciences, rural development, development studies, or a related field, with 2–4 years of relevant experience in program support, field implementation, stakeholder coordination, documentation, and operational follow-up. The candidate should have experience supporting field-level activities, coordinating with community members, workers, factories, partners, or local stakeholders, maintaining trackers, assisting with training logistics, and supporting reporting and documentation. Candidates with strong field experience in community or worker-focused programmes may also be considered.

Skills and Competencies Required

1. Demonstrates accountability, integrity, confidentiality, and respect while maintaining professional working relationships with team members, partners, factories, workers, and field stakeholders.
2. Works with ownership and responsibility to complete assigned tasks, follow-ups, documentation, trackers, and field activities on time and with quality.
3. Is self-driven, proactive, and able to support field-level implementation, identify coordination gaps, flag challenges early, and help find practical solutions.
4. Has relevant experience in supporting field-based programmes, preferably in public health, worker wellbeing, labour rights, occupational health, climate resilience, supply chains, or community development.
5. Has strong coordination, training support, documentation, reporting, data collection, data entry, and tracker-management skills.
6. Can support communication and coordination with factories, government departments, civil society organisations, implementation partners, field teams, technical teams, and internal teams.
7. Understands or is willing to build understanding of worker vulnerabilities, gender and migrant worker issues, occupational health and safety, factory systems, climate and health, and supply chain contexts.
8. Has good communication and facilitation skills in Telugu and English; can support meetings, trainings, field visits, stakeholder consultations, and is willing to travel extensively within the cluster.

Work Location

Hindupur industrial cluster, Andhra Pradesh, with travel within the cluster and to district/state meetings as required.

Reporting

Cluster Manager 

No. of Position

2

Remuneration

Remuneration will be discussed and finalized based on the candidate's profile, experience, role fit, and expected level of effort.