Community Organisers
- Employer
- Shelter
- Location
- Bristol, London or Birmingham
- Salary
- £33,080 pa (London) or £28,589 pa (Bristol and Birmingham) plus excellent benefits
- Closing date
- 14 Jul 2019
View more
- Function
- Campaigning, PR & Communications
- Sector
- Social Care & Welfare, Housing & Homelessness
- Hours
- Full Time
- Contract Type
- Permanent
Job Details
Do you want to use your skills as a Community Organiser to help fight the housing crisis? Then join Shelter as part of our new Community Organising programme and you could soon be playing your part in bringing about positive change that will genuinely transform millions of people’s lives.
Shelter exists to defend the right to a safe home for everyone. We strive for change, with individuals, in communities and across society. A home is a fundamental human need and a basic moral right, yet in Britain today, that right is being denied to millions of people whose lives are blighted by homelessness, bad conditions, soaring rents, discrimination and the threat of eviction. Six million households are denied the right to a safe home or are threatened with losing it. 4,750 people sleep on our streets on any given night. 90,000 households are stuck in unsuitable temporary accommodation. In short, it's a national emergency. But, we have a plan, a strategy for the future. Could you help us implement it?
Our ambitious ten-year strategy will see us stand up for the rights of renters, demand social rent homes for everyone who wants them, prevent people from becoming homeless and support people who are homeless back into a home. The expanding campaigns team has a key role at very heart of this, helping build both the plan and the national movement needed to make it a reality.
About the role
An amazing opportunity to work with communities facing housing injustice to tackle the housing crisis, you will be part of a new Community Organising programme at Shelter that will listen to and support communities to bring about change. One of four Organiser roles, you will be working with a team of Organisers and Campaigners across the UK to bring about a step change in our response to the housing crisis. Whether you are having 1:1 meetings, delivering training or building leadership you will be able to build on the existing approaches, skills and knowledge within Shelter in campaigning, advice or community networks to develop a programme that has real potential to add value to the housing movement.
About you
This is not an entry level role, so you will already have some experience in organising and/or campaigning. A committed individual who wants to make sure the voices of those most affected by the housing crisis are heard you will have strong relationship building skills and a keen understanding of strategy development and political influencing.
Ideally you will have some understanding of how large organisations or NGOs operate to be able to integrate Community Organising into these structures and ways of working to become more than the sum of our parts. And, while housing and homelessness experience is not a requirement, you must share our passion for campaigning for the rights of people affected by the UK housing crisis.
Benefits
We offer a wide range of benefits, including 30 days of annual leave, enhanced family friendly policies, pension and interest free travel loans. Our employees also have access to a tenancy deposit loan, cycle to work scheme and an employee assistance programme.
Shelter helps millions of people every year struggling with bad housing or homelessness through our advice, support and legal services. And we campaign to make sure that, one day, no one will have to turn to us for help. We’re here so no one has to fight bad housing or homelessness on their own.
To find out more about the role and the benefits of working for Shelter please click "Apply". Be part of our campaigns team and be the change you want to see in society.
Safeguarding is everyone’s business. Shelter is committed to protecting the health, wellbeing and human rights of those we support, and enabling them to live free from harm, abuse and neglect. All our staff will be expected to observe professional standards of behaviour and conduct their work in line with our Safeguarding Policies.
At Shelter, we welcome and encourage applications from everyone regardless of age, disability, gender, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. We are facing diverse problems, so need diverse people to tackle them.
Shelter does not accept unsolicited CVs from external recruitment agencies nor accept the fees associated with them.
Company
The housing crisis is now a national emergency.
Shelter was founded 52 years ago, not by the wealthy or powerful, but as a community organisation whose purpose was to change society. That means we’re needed more now than at any time in our history: for millions of our fellow citizens the fundamental human need for a safe home is ignored.
Forget finding who’s to blame for this. Shelter is here to do far more than just point out what’s gone wrong. We are here to put it right, and that’s why our aim is for this strategy to be nothing less than a turning point for both Shelter and our country.
Without a home, no one can achieve their full potential. With millions whose right to a home is under threat, neither can the country. We believe that because the need for a home is so all-consuming, a home is a basic moral right, and everything we will do from now will be done to defend that right.
We’ve all talked so much about the ‘housing crisis’ that we’ve stopped believing it can be solved. The phrase has become like wallpaper. But this is a national emergency, and one that demands fearless, ambitious action.
In developing this strategy, it’s been vital to start with our own people: those who rely on our services, our volunteers, our employees. We aim to rebuild a movement, stronger than ever, and a movement must start with a simple idea that unites everyone within Shelter, our best advocates. Change starts here, in our work with individuals, spreading through communities, and across society.
We identify in this strategy six million households whose right to a home is either denied or under threat at this very moment. Soaring rents that squeeze out food and clothing, being thrown out of your home through no fault of your own, simply being too poor to afford a home: the terror of homelessness is everywhere.
Many are living in grossly unfit and unsafe conditions, adults and children whose lives are blighted by fear and despair. Discrimination is rampant in private renting and we have lost sight of the simple fact that we need a home just as much as we need healthcare and education. We are building the fewest social homes in 70 years, at a time when more and more people desperately need them.
In Shelter’s services, our people work tirelessly to alleviate the sheer destitution they see day in and day out. We will be a rock in the storm every day for those who need us. But our aim is bigger – to cut this suffering off at source – and we acknowledge in this strategy that we can’t do it overnight, neither can we do it alone.
For the first time, Shelter is committing in this strategy to ten-year goals as well as three-year goals so we can be confident of building to the necessary changes over the next decade. And at the same time we commit in this strategy to building the movement of people who will make this change possible.
We plan in the next three years to have 500,000 supporters join us in our mission to respond to this emergency, through campaigning, volunteering and donating. It is people that can power the change we seek.
This national emergency has been decades in the making. Now is the moment to act together with one purpose. In the community, our hubs and shops will be magnets for everyone with a role in ending the national emergency. Nationally, we will work with everyone who sees the desperate need for change: no one group or party is to blame for the emergency, and no one group or party can end it either.
Shelter: it’s a fundamental need and a basic moral right. Please join us to defend it.
Polly Neate, Chief Executive
Helen Baker, Chair
- Website
- http://www.shelter.org.uk/jobs
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