Project Officer (Swansea Community Greenspaces)

Job Title: Project Officer (Swansea Community Greenspaces Project)
Responsible to: Centre Manager
Salary: £25-27,000 per annum/pro rata, depending on experience.
Core Hours: 28 hours per week. We are flexible in terms of days and hours worked. Occasional weekend or
evening work will be necessary. Applications for job sharing are welcomed.
Position Type: Part time, 1 year fixed until December 2024. Potential to extend dependent on funding.
Annual Leave: 25 days plus bank holidays, per annum/pro rata
Pension: Government NEST scheme, 3% employer / 5% employee contribution
Location: Based at The Environment Centre, Pier Street, Swansea, SA1 1RY. Working from home, as well as
with groups throughout Swansea is also expected.

Are you someone who has a passion for nature and being part of grassroots movements to
protect it? Are you well organised, a problem-solver, with experience of practical action to
help communities look after their green spaces? Do you like the idea of motivating and
supporting community-led action to improve biodiversity, increase food growing and enhance our
local environment? If this sounds like you, then we’d love to meet you!

The Swansea Community Green Spaces Project supports communities to make greater use of
publicly owned and accessible green spaces within their neighbourhoods and become more involved
in how these are managed and improved for community benefit such as to provide better play
spaces, to support nature recovery or to develop a community growing area.

This role will include proactively advising groups, engaging local communities,
organising training, and delivering practical activities. The successful candidate will have a
good understanding of environmental and sustainability issues, experience in managing community
projects and working with volunteers, a strong background in horticulture and/or nature
conservation, and experience networking with groups and organisations.

As Project Officer you will be expected to provide advice, guidance and training to community
groups to help them achieve their goals. This includes:

• Actively reaching out and engaging with communities and groups, proving encouragement and
  support, and acting as the first point of contact for information and advice.
• Advising new groups on setting up as constituted bodies and preparing policies.
• Helping groups engage local communities e.g. through consultations and events;
• Helping groups to carry out risk assessments on activities.
• Developing and helping deliver a year-long training programme in response to the
  training needs of groups and individuals within these.
• Sharing site management and growing skills, to increase participants knowledge and
  confidence.
• Developing content for communications and promotions and, with support, maintaining the
  project webpage and social media.
• Networking with local and national organisations to raise the profile of the project, to
  access support and resources, and to promote collaboration.
• Applying for funding or working with funders to identify suitable projects to support.
• Responsibility for mentoring and supporting volunteers involved in the project.
• Facilitating a feasibility study looking at the best process to put into place to link up
  the mapping of publicly owned spaces that are underutilised or available for community
  management, with groups that would like to access land to manage for community benefit.
• Being responsible for the collection of information and data from groups and wider project
  activity, to enable ongoing monitoring and evaluation.
• Contributing to the annual Project Report.
• Arranging Swansea Community Green Spaces Steering Group meetings, providing updates on
  activities and recording meeting note.

Essential Criteria

• A strong background in horticulture and/or conservation.
• Experience of facilitating group activity or organising at a community level.
• Experience of project management and ability to organise events and activities.
• An understanding of health and safety issues and experience of preparing risk assessments.
• Strong people skills, experience working with volunteers, community leaders and project
  partners.
• Able to work with a diverse range of people and deal diplomatically with conflicting ideas
  or concerns.
• Excellent organisational and time management skills.
• Self-motivated and comfortable working alone and with others.

Desirable Criteria

• A good understanding of environmental and sustainability issues.
• Ability to develop and deliver basic training in horticulture and/or conservation.
• Experience of using social media and updating website content.
• Ability to communicate through the medium of Welsh.

How to Apply

Please complete our Application Form, available on our website. 

Key Dates

The deadline for applications is Midday on Monday 11th December 2023.

We expect interviews to take place the week of 18th December 2023.