Rural Routes to Climate Solutions (RR2CS) is an Alberta-based initiative shining a spotlight on the climate solutions that farmers, ranchers and communities in rural Alberta can benefit from. RR2CS is happy to announce that we are seeking a Community Animator to join our great team of community organizers, facilitators and communications specialists.
The Community Animator will be responsible for the following activities:
- Communications, organizing, and logistics for the Regenerative Agriculture Lab (RAL), a flagship project of RR2CS.
- Supporting and assisting the RAL facilitation team in design and delivery of workshops, webinars and other participant interactions within the Lab.
- Mobilizing and animating the community through connecting with participants in between engagements.
The Community Animator will contribute to and support the rest of the RR2CS team with the following activities:
- blog, podcast, video production.
- social media channels and the website.
- webinars, workshops, field days and other social innovation labs.
Who You Are
You’re awesome. Some might say you’re a wizard at the three C’s: communication, coordinating, and comfortability. You make people feel welcomed and wanted. The past few years have been hard, but you’ve taken the changes in stride, and can thrive when working remotely and independently. We’re not the type to hover over your shoulder, asking “Whatcha doing? Whatcha doing?” At the same time, the rest of the RR2CS team is there to help during times of uncertainty or when clarification is needed.
You’re a delight to speak with, thoughtful, flexible, and passionate about empowering rural communities. Honestly, you’re almost too excited for the future of regenerative agriculture in Alberta (we love that!). You believe in people and their ability to bring about positive change.
If you agree that this describes you, we’d love to hear from you!
What is a Community Animator?
The role is part project coordinator (scheduling, communicating, follow-up, logistics) and part facilitator (supporting design and delivery of workshops, interviews) and part relationship-building (connecting with and building connections between participants). The Community Animator works alongside the facilitation team, who are external consultants and invites, informs, and connects with the participants, who are committed agricultural producers and agriculture industry leaders. Working with these two groups, the Community Animator builds out and maintains the Regenerative Agriculture Lab (RAL).
The Community Animator has to stay up to date on key issues, ‘who is who’ in the space, and be able to connect and have a sense into what is happening for individuals and the group in order to provide input to the Lab as it evolves.
Experience in facilitating and hosting groups is a plus; flexibility, strong listening skills, planning and project management required. Since RAL is a participants-driven project, there is no one project lead, but the Community Animator is effectively the Rural Routes to Climate Solutions’ point person on RAL.
What is the Regenerative Agriculture Lab?
The “Lab” part of the Regenerative Agriculture Lab (RAL) may evoke images of scientists in white coats in a research facility. That is not the Regenerative Agriculture Lab. RAL is a social innovation lab where participants work together through a series of engagements and interactions (e.g. workshops, webinars, collaborative initiatives) and to respond to a very timely question:
As regenerative agriculture is an evolving system on the cusp of taking off, how do we ensure growing adoption doesn’t jeopardize its integrity or dilute its potential?
The RAL aims to respond to this question by…
- Hosting a forum for innovation and collaboration for a network of committed regenerative agriculture actors in Alberta.
- Celebrating, learning from, and widely sharing the stories of Albertans who have been putting regenerative agriculture practices into action on farms and ranches.
- Working on collaborative initiatives that enable regenerative agriculture to accelerate its awareness and impact across all players in Alberta’s agriculture system.
- Co-creating a shared vision of a regenerative agriculture system that the future requires of us.
- Generating and exemplifying narratives of regenerative agriculture that bridge the polarization on the topic and invites interest from other agriculture players.
Despite the challenges of the pandemic and one of the worst droughts in memory, we successfully completed Phase 1 of RAL in 2021. Phase 1 participants were mainly agricultural producers. It is our intention with Phase 2 (2022-2023) to work with agricultural producers once again and open up participation to other agricultural system stakeholders like extension groups, colleges and research institutes, commodity groups, agricultural inputs companies, government and food and beverage companies.
Wages: $27.5-$31.00/hour depending on level of experience. You will be working as a contractor. Contractors are responsible for ensuring that necessary payments for income tax / CPP have been made.
Hours: 10-15 hours/week.
Duration: January 15th 2022 – October 31st, 2023.
Qualifications:
- Strong planning and interpersonal communication skills.
- Knowledge of agriculture and/or rural Alberta social, economic and environmental issues.
- A basic understanding of climate change mitigation and adaptation including a good knowledge of agricultural and/or nature-based climate solutions.
- Strong team-communications skills for working with the facilitation team (external consultants), participants, RR2CS team and partners.
- Experience and comfort in using online tools and working virtually.
Assets:
- Previous experience facilitating and hosting groups (in-person and online).
- Previous experience working for an agriculture organization.
- A willingness to problem solve in order to overcome the challenges and evolution the Lab may face.
- Related to the above, an ability to ask for help when needing clarity or support.
- A sense of humor. Listen to our podcast episodes The Coordinators and What We Do to better understand our workplace sense of humor.
Requirements and Expectations:
- Report to the Director.
Participate in weekly team meetings. - Depending on the COVID-19 public health restrictions, there may be some travel required for events or in-person strategy sessions. Your mileage will be covered by Rural Routes.
- Using online tools like WordPress, Google Drive, Zoom and Trello.
- Keep track of and manage your own hours.
Interested applicants should submit a cover letter and resume as a PDF and email it to adminrr2cs@stettlerlearning.com by Friday December 31st, 2021. Please include “Community Animator Application” in the subject line of your email. Only considered candidates will be contacted for interviews.
In the event a successful candidate is not found, the application process will be reopened.
