Schools Advocacy Volunteer

Volunteer: Schools Advocacy Volunteer
Reporting to: Schools Advocacy Coordinator
Location: Hereford Town Centre
Working hours: 2 or 3 days a week during speaker visits

Background

Concern Universal is an international development organisation that works to address the causes of poverty in nine countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America by working alongside some of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable communities. Working in partnership with local organisations, Concern Universal supports initiatives in a number of sectors including water and environmental sanitation, food security and sustainable livelihoods, and human rights.

Concern Universal operates a small co-ordinating office in Hereford, England. This office plays a critical supporting role for the ten country offices. Volunteers have played an increasingly important role alongside paid staff in helping CU achieve its objectives in the last few years. We aim to offer volunteers varied tasks, and genuine appreciation of the valuable roles they perform. The Schools Advocacy Volunteer will join the Advocacy Team to support the delivery of the Inspiring Engagement Through Education project (IETE).

The aim of the School Advocacy role is to support the advocacy team, with the objective of inspiring and influencing others to fight poverty and inequality, securing changes to policy and practice to help overcome barriers to development and open up new opportunities; and more and better investment in holistic, community-led development approaches. The relevant purpose of these strategic objectives is to build a stronger global movement to combat poverty and inequality – engaging individuals to build a fairer world together through development education and activism.

Role

The role is specifically to escort international visitors to schools during the autumn term and follow up with workshops in schools. Speaker visits to schools have been a very successful part of the project, happening twice a year and can be a learning opportunity for students and teachers to find out firsthand about CU’s projects as well as learn about another country from a development professional. Workshops in schools help students and teachers to gain a deeper understanding of global issues. The volunteer would be expected to carry out the following tasks:

School visits
- Support in making arrangements for international advocates to visit schools and accompanying speaker, introducing the speaker to relevant staff in schools and contributing when necessary to the talks.
- Support the recruiting of schools to take part in the project.
Workshops
- Support in workshop delivery in primary and/or secondary schools
Administrative support
- Ensure that schools data is continually updated on the database

Experience

Teaching or school experience
Interest and/or subject knowledge of International Development
Excellent interpersonal skills and a friendly flexible approach to team work
Excellent spoken English, experience of speaking to large groups of young people
ICT literacy including Word and Power point
Good administration and organisational skills

Benefits

Access to internal and external training opportunities where relevant/appropriate
Invitation to office social events and away days
CU can act as a referee for potential employers
Employer’s Liability Insurance cover

Reimbursement of expenses

1. Travel expenses for work can be reclaimed either:
- Actual cost of public transport (bus or second class rail) against a receipt or
- A rate of 40p per mile for use of private car.
When working for four hours or more in a day, lunch costs can be reclaimed against a receipt for up to £3.00 per day.

Expenses are claimed by completing an Expenses Claim Form and must be accompanied by receipts (except in the case of private car mileage).

Downloads

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You may need to download Microsoft viewer software to view Word, Excel or Powerpoint files.

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