We’re looking for a Community Development Director!

Could this be you? 

Role Profile

Let’s start with the expected bits of the role profile, just so we all know the basics.

Reporting to: Board of Trustees 

Responsible for: Strategic Development of community work provision

Location: Cumbria wide (and WFH, ARC HQ, Flexible)

Salary: £36,000.00

Why do we need this role? 

Anti Racist Cumbria exists to make Cumbria an anti-racist county. That’s our aim. If we’re serious about doing that we need everyone (or more people than not) to want that too, and to work with us to make that happen. That’s why we need to work with all communities in our beautiful county. This role, made possible by The National Lottery Community Fund, with thanks to National Lottery players will enable us to do this work.

What does the role involve/main duties? 

Think about it like this; here’s Cumbria. 

Imagine community facilitators all over this county holding Community Conversations with people in these areas: 

1 & 2 – Cockermouth & Whitehaven in the west 

3 – Carlisle and Penrith in the north 

4 – the Furness Peninsula encapsulating Barrow, Ulverston, Dalton 

5 – the national park including Keswick, Windermere, Ambleside  

Think about all the different types of people living in these areas, from intergenerational Cumbrians, born and bred here for hundreds of years, right through to ‘off-comers’ who have made lives here.  Add to your imaginings, community project workers, working with specific focus groups made up of new arrivals in the forms of people seeking asylum or moving here to work in our hospitals, or parents racialised as white with mixed-heritage children  to name just a few of the people who make up our communities. Now imagine you engaging with those community facilitators and those community project workers to set up all these activities. 

You will also have responsibility for our team of volunteers (ARCangels) who we couldn’t do without. There are over 100 of them volunteering for various opportunities and events throughout the year. 

You will take the lead on other community partnership projects we are working on. For example, our work with The Rum Story in Whitehaven on our The Rum Story Re-Imagined project where we are working with local communities. 

You will also line manage our Youth Projects Manager and the work they are doing with their team of youth workers and young people.

Your job isn’t to run projects or host conversations as such, although there might be some of that at points throughout your work when it’s needed. Your role is a strategic one and might involve actions like, scoping and finding funding, mapping communities and connecting the dots around need, looking at ways in which communities can take control for themselves. You’ll need to build relationships with other community workers and groups and explore ways in which collaborations can take shape and you’ll need to figure out what workers you need to make things happen, what they need to look like and what training and support they will require, then organise and facilitate this. Another important part of your role is to work and liaise closely with our Comms and Policy Lead to ensure your work leans into theirs in order to influence policy and make the structural anti-racist change happen.

The map above doesn’t really give you a perspective of the size of our beautiful county. and working across the whole of it isn’t always going to be straightforward (!), but it is needed and it will be rewarding! You will need to be out and about a lot, mapping, meeting, building relationships. You will need a lot of skills in your toolkit to be able to deliver. And we are keen on delivery. And that brings us nicely to the next section. 

We hope you are still with us. 

Skills

You will need:

• The ability to manage a team of community facilitators and project workers and build a foundation based on what good teamwork looks like. You will need to figure out who your workers are, what skills you need them to have (and if they don’t have them), what you will do to support them
• To facilitate and coordinate training sessions for your team 
• To be able to work some evenings, weekends and during school holidays 
• Ability get to know communities around the county, form relationships across the broad spectrums of Cumbria’s population
• Ability to work out what services are available already, how to tap into those, how to make space for anti-racism within them, and form new relationships across broad spectrums of Cumbria’s population 

• To support a programme of projects, ensuring anti-racism is embedded throughout, but at the same time remembering that projects need to engage and meet people where they are at. You will be using an asset-based approach which puts people at the centre of the work, rather than ‘this is what we’re doing’. Your job is to ensure you and your team amplify voices, voices which often go unheard or un-listened to, it’s not be their voice per se.
• An understanding that this is going to take money, so you will need to apply for funding pots (small pots which you will manage yourself) and with the support of the CEO, larger funding pots which you will manage along with the Digital and Ops Manager
• To be knowledgeable and have experience of safeguarding, particularly in relation to vulnerable adults and ensure your team understands safeguarding and is able to implement as required. You’ll also need to think about how you deal with issues that might arise during projects and sessions delivering on projects 
• To monitor, record and evaluate work and provide reports and information as required in order to ensure a consistently high quality provision and demonstrate the impact of the projects you are managing.
• To be aware of and adhere to Anti Racist Cumbria policies and procedures, in particular Safeguarding and racial trauma awareness.

That’s a lot to do isn’t it? And it isn’t an exhaustive list, so we want to manage your expectations from the start – it’s a big job! Check the person specification below to see if you have the managerial skills needed for this job. 

Person Specification

You will need to be extremely passionate about anti-racism; we are under no illusions that engaging in anti-racist practice exposes activists (and you will need to be an activist) to an increasingly profound awareness of white supremacy, structural racism and other intersecting structured systems of inequity (i.e. sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism). As such you’ll need to consistently and continuously evidence and demonstrate your own anti-racist journey. 

Passion about this work isn’t enough on its own; you need to believe in the power of communities and what they can and should bring to the party, and you need to be creative and high achieving (but not necessarily in a qualifications way). To be our Community Development Director you should be knowledgeable and have the following qualities, skills and experience.

Knowledge 

• Understanding of national and local anti-racist groups and other initiatives
• Strong experience in Safeguarding best practice and how these relate to communities, especially vulnerable adults and staff within  ARC
• Good knowledge of Health and Safety practices 
• Knowledge of factors affecting lives of people in our communities, particularly our strategically undervalued communities

Qualities

• A strong and passionate commitment to anti-racism
• Strong commitment to giving power back to communities to be able to advocate for themselves 
• Strong commitment to an asset-based approach and a creative drive to bring your team (and in turn communities) with you and with us
• Patience, flexibility, resilience and an ability to be resourced both emotionally and physically to do this work (with ARC’s regular wellbeing support playing a big part in this resourcing)

Skills

• Strong project management skills 
• Along with the knowledge of factors affecting lives of people in communities (under Knowledge above), the ability to provide reliable support to them and your team in times of stress
• Ability to design and implement high quality projects with your team
• Strong planning skills which enable you to plan and prioritise competing tasks, work at a fast pace, support multiple projects simultaneously and set realistic targets 
• Ability to communicate confidently with a wide range of people and organisations using platforms that work for your audience 
• Ability to identify and challenge racism and other intersectional and discriminatory behaviours, taking appropriate action as necessary
• Ability to monitor, evaluate and report using a wide range of information and research to inform and measure your understanding  and outcomes  
• Ability to support, coach or mentor others and bring out the best in them
• Strong IT skills (emails, googledrive, sheets, docs), smart phone camera and basic pic editing
• Ability to keep accurate, confidential and up-to-date work records, in line with our policies and procedures
• Ability to work independently to deliver projects and specific pieces of work
• Ability to work as part of a team
• Ability to listen and to understand (even if you don’t agree with) the perspective and views of others 

Experience of

• Working with Black and Brown global majority communities
• Working with strategically undervalued communities 
• Working with a wide range of communities generally
• Anti-racist initiatives
• Managing team or staff members 
• Project management 
• Working with young people and youth workers
• Liaising with collaborative partners to deliver quality work
• Experience of working effectively with a wide range of stakeholders, both locally, countywide and nationally 
• Supporting people in communities who are disaffected, underachieving and/or have social/emotional barriers to participation
• Working with volunteers and community partners
• Face to face grass roots delivery
• Residential work
• Project Budget management 
• Funding applications (preferably large)
• Promoting, reaching and engaging communities through avenues such as social media 

General

This is a one year fixed term role (extension of which is subject to funding). It’s important to say that whilst we are contracted to work 40 hours a week, like many full time contracts, we sometimes have no choice but to work more hours than this in order to get the work done. That means the work and this role can (and does) involve working some unsocial hours. As we’ve said before, this work involves working evenings, weekends and school holidays. Whilst we are a flexible bunch and we don’t want to get all white supremacy ‘corporate’ on ourselves and start counting every hour and taking an hour back for any worked over 40 in a week, we get it when you say you won’t be in Friday afternoon and we don’t expect an essay explaining why. In fact, we’ll encourage you to take the whole damn day instead. 

We do need you to have an enhanced CRB certificate which is in accordance with our Safeguarding procedures, but if you haven’t got one and you get the job, we will organise this. We’re just letting you know you can’t do the job without one. 

I know we’ve mentioned it’s a big county a couple of times now, but a big part of your job is being able to engage with people and move around the whole county. In reality, it’s not just a big part of your job, it’s an essential part of it (as is pounding the pavements) and whilst we get that not everyone wants to drive these days, you’re going to have to work really hard to convince us that you can do the job without a full driving license and a car and you’ll need to be able to manage our county’s windy and often narrow roads and our wonderful weather! 

And finally…you will be working in a Black led organisation and we want to see more Black people, Brown people and people from under-represented groups in our growing and positive team. Anyone who joins ARC will be supported in an anti-racist environment with a fantastic network of volunteers and a Board of Trustees from a wide range of backgrounds; age, economic, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, heritage and cultures. 

The above duties are not intended to be an exhaustive list, but a good and honest indication of the requirements of this post.  Naturally duties may be varied from time to time to reflect the changing needs of an organisation that is in service to its county and making it an anti-racist one.

Benefits and Entitlements 

This is a one year fixed term appointment – £36,000.00 (gross) per annum.

• Hybrid office/home working/ flexible working environment
• 36 days annual leave including Bank Holidays
• Statutory sick pay
• Employers pension scheme contributions
• Regular well-being and wellness support

How to apply 

Please submit a statement, maximum of two sides of A4 pages, detailing your experience of working in communities and demonstrating ways in which you have worked to give power back to communities. Please do not submit a statement which simply tells us you have the skills and qualities needed and the experience required for this role – demonstrate what you have done in practice to evidence this. 

Please also send a copy of your CV, which should be no longer than two sides of A4, and should include full contact details and where you are currently based to demonstrate your previous work roles that evidence the skills, qualities and experience you have outlined.

Send both documents to hello@antiracistcumbria.org and please remember to let us know where you saw this post advertised    

If you would prefer to give your statement in another format, please contact us to discuss.

Closing date 

6.00pm  29 November 2024

Interviews

Will take place on Thursday 5th December by zoom and will involve an interview panel. More details will be provided if you are invited to interview. 

Please ensure you are available for the interview date if you decide to apply for this post as we are unable to change the date to accommodate external factors. 

We will inform you if you are called for an interview no later than 5pm on Monday 2nd December If you have not heard from us by this time, please assume you will not be called.