Community Engagement Lead

We're Recruiting - Community Engagement Lead Vacancy

Disability Rights UK is part of a partnership that has received funding from The National Lottery Community Fund to deliver an ambitious and innovative new programme. The partnership will support charities in England and Scotland to empower diverse and marginalised communities to respond to climate change, and to get their voices heard in environmental policy and media debates.  

The programme will focus on Disabled people; those facing financial insecurity; and people from ethnic minority communities. These voices are often the least heard from in national and local debates on our environment. This new work aims to change that.

The Community Engagement Lead will deliver activity with Disabled People's Organisations that:

• Increases awareness of the impact of environmental change and related policy on different communities 
• Listens to people in these communities to find out what actions they want charities and local government to take
• Develops shared local environmental policy priorities and empowers these organisations to advocate directly to local and national policy makers
• Identifies actions that these organisations can take to support communities to respond to climate change, and helps organisations to implement them
• Identifies people with lived experience to receive hands on training in order to act as diverse champions to media and policy makers
• They will work closely with other Community Engagement staff employed by Turn2Us & The Race Equality Foundation, focused on reaching organisations supporting those facing financial insecurity and people from ethnic minority communities.

Purpose of job: 

To manage our relationships with Disabled People's Organisations and people with lived experience of disability in relation to the environmental crises, working closely with other partners on the project to empower communities to respond to climate change and to get diverse voices heard in environmental debates. 

Main duties: 

Partnership working 

• Maintain effective and productive relationships and ‘ways of working’ with the other programme partners 
• Have regular contact with the Programme Manager at NPC to ensure they are kept up-to-date and can input as appropriate.  

• Regularly communicate with wider programme partners and ensure that information, intelligence on programme delivery and best practice is shared 

Programme Design

• Facilitate the design of programme activity each year with input from programme partners, grassroots organisations and people with lived experience of disability

Programme Delivery

• Develop and deliver training and practical workshops to help community groups and charities support the people they serve to respond to environmental change
• Develop and deliver deliberation groups with people with lived experience to understand their priorities for environmental action by charities, community groups and policy makers
• Support joint advocacy activity, including through input on joint position statements, identifying key policy targets, and developing briefings that supports influencing by programme participants
• Support environmental action, including through developing tools, research and resources
• Identify and build relationships with Disabled people, to receive training and opportunities to act as a spokesperson on environmental change in the media and with policy makers

Communications & Sharing Learning 

• Act as a contact point for the communications team on the programme, providing content for articles, reports and other communications materials. 
• Facilitate shared learning between programme participants
• Contribute to toolkits based on the learning from the programme. 

For full information, please see the Job Information Pack attached below.