Community Engagement & Project Coordinator

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Roman Road Trust works to strengthen local communities, with a focus on the high street as the heart of the community.

The Community Engagement and Project Coordinator will help develop relations with local businesses, residents and community groups in the Roman Road area of Bow and Bethnal Green (Globe Town), and to help organise and deliver activities that will:

  • increase community connection
  • develop community capacity
  • stimulate community participation
  • help extend Roman Road Trust’s presence to Globe Town

By community capacity, it is meant the skills and confidence needed for a community to take advantage of opportunities, deal with challenges and develop solutions and action plans.

Salary

£18,000-£28,000 per annum pro rata and dependent on experience. Part-time and full-time considered. Roman Road Trust is proud to be a London Living Wage employer.

Duties

Outreach & Engagement
  • To develop and maintain relations with local businesses, residents and community groups (schools, charities, faith groups, youth services)
  • To develop and deliver ideas for engagement activities to reach different groups within the community
  • To organise and deliver meetings, creative workshops and small events
  • To organise creative activities and conversation pieces that will help develop community capacity
  • To help identify the assets, needs, opportunities, rights and responsibilities of community members
  • To conduct consultations and surveys
  • To recruit and engage with volunteers who will help organise engagement activities
  • To manage all volunteers
Online Outreach & Engagement

Field-work will be complemented by online outreach, engagement and community networking:

  • To keep local members updated with regular blog posts about our activities
  • To produce a monthly newsletter to our members about all RRT activities.
  • To connect with business, residents and community groups on social media platforms
  • To help manage the growth of RRT’s database of members
  • To organise online polls and other engagement activity
  • To liaise with the RRT’s Membership and Communications Director
Reporting
  • To provide monthly reports for circulation to the Board of Directors
  • To compose and deliver impact measurement reports
  • To conduct community consultation and surveys

Skills required

First and foremost, you will need to love people and community! Your motivation will be a passion for localism, achieving positive social impact, community cohesion, networking and human-interest stories.

The role will need someone with excellent listening, networking, advocacy and facilitation skills to help unite people from communities perceived to be culturally and economically disadvantaged.

The job involves organizing focus groups, workshops and outreach meetings so you will need to be organized and good with managing a limited budget. On occasions you will need to liaise effectively with our main event organizer.

A large part of the job includes writing, from feedback reports to blogs and newsletters. You do not need journalistic experience but you will need to write well and quickly, or have the aptitude to learn to do so.

Additionally, you will need to be proficient with digital tools and comfortable using them on a daily basis:

  • Photography – you will need to record your work visually, so you will need a good eye for beauty and capturing community spirit
  • Photoshop or similar – to resize and optimize photography
  • WordPress – to write and publish posts
  • Mailchimp – to create mail campaigns
  • Instagram – know how to hashtag
  • Twitter – understand the B2B power of Twitter
  • Facebook – you will need to place Facebook ads on occasion

Personal Qualities

You will be engaging with a wide range of people, many of whom feel disenfranchised and neglected. You will need to be patient and sensitive yet positive and enthusiastic in nature,  as well as have the tenacity and resilience to manage and deal with historic matters of conflict.

Experience Needed

One to three years in the field of community outreach, engagement or development is desirable but not essential. Recent graduates will be considered if interest in the field of community engagement can be proven.

What to expect

This job requires a significant element of fieldwork, with regular visits to local businesses and community groups. A significant part of your time will be spent travelling and visiting people. This could be during weekends and evenings so considerable flexibility is required.

RRT are in the process of securing office space. Until then, the candidate will need to be able to work remotely.

The successful candidate will be engaged on a freelance basis and must be able to provide their own computer and smart phone and pay for any associated phone calls and network contracts.

The job will be a minimum of two or three days per week, as agreed.

About Roman Road Trust

Roman Road Trust is a small but ambitious community and economic development company operating in the Roman Road area in Bow and Bethnal Green in Tower Hamlets, East London. It is a charitable organisation set up to help improve the high street, and its vision is for a thriving local economy that gives the opportunity and space for communities to flourish.

Roman Road Trust is pioneering the Community Improvement District model, based on the principle that a high street is much more than the shops on the main road, and that sustainable revitalisation of the high street can only succeed if it is informed by the wider community.

Using the principle of co-production, Roman Road Trust activates, facilitates, supports and promotes a network of citizen-led community development initiatives to help revitalise the high street and, by extension, the community it serves. 

A co-production model allows Roman Road Trust to work with a number of specialist partners on a wide range of projects. This enables Roman Road Trust to deliver a holistic approach to community development, working simultaneously on a variety of elements including local governance, place branding, marketing and communications, community events, skills and employability, workspace provision, evening economy, heritage and culture, local planning and public realm development.

The Organisation

RRT’s work is done on a project-basis, with most projects led by the CEO or other freelance professionals who work regularly for RRT. RRT’s activities have grown gradually since the organisation began as the Roman Road Town Team in 2012, incorporating in November 2014. In 2016, the organisation turned over c£50k.

The Board

The CEO reports to the RRT Board. The Board is non-executive and comprises:

  1. Chair – Holly Stout
  2. Secretary – Stephanie Fox
  3. Finance Director – Chris Worthington
  4. Planning Director – Sarah Allan-Sinclair
  5. Commercial Director – Nick Morgan
  6. Director – Irene de Lorenzis
  7. Membership & Comms Director – Laura Kekuti

Application Deadline

Applications need to be made by Friday 30th June and candidates will have to be available for interview w/c Monday 3rd July and be available for work from Monday 10th July.

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