Project Organiser

Citizens UK

Citizens UK is the UK's biggest, most diverse and most effective people-powered alliance. We bring communities and local organisations together to work on issues that matter; from campaigning for zebra crossings on dangerous roads, to reforming the immigration system, to the Living Wage campaign. We have a track record of winning change through hundreds of local and national campaigns. We know everyday people have the ability to shape the world around them.

We believe that through developing local leaders, we can drive nationwide change and create community-led solutions to big and small problems.

Project Information

Butetown and Grangetown Neighbourhood Fund project, funded by the Youth Endowment Fund. More details here:
Neighbourhood Fund Youth Endowment Fund

Citizens Cymru Wales has developed an innovative approach to reducing youth violence with community organising at its heart, working across four unique assumptions:

• 'It takes a village to raise a child'
• 'Anger without power leads to rage'
• 'Recognising the need to address Adverse Community Experiences'
• 'If you are not at the table, you're on the menu'

In 2021 it developed a community led action plan to address youth violence in the neighbourhoods of Butetown and Grangetown. This work then secured £1m funding from the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) to demonstrate how community organising can improve the lives of children and young people. Across Grangetown and Butetown, almost 2500 people were listened to, and issues workshops took place from which seven interventions were identified including Mental health, Additional Learning Needs and Literacy, an Employment partnership, Sports and diversionary activities and local microgrants.

Each intervention is led by a local community-based organisation. At the heart of the work is building a hyperlocal community organising alliance. Underpinning the work is the development of a Youth Action Zone, a youth-led multi-agency partnership to support young people in the neighbourhood for the long term. The project is in its final year of delivery and needs a locally based project manager to support the current organisations to fulfil the action plan and build a long-term legacy.

Main Responsibilities

This is a unique role, focused on project management but embedding community organising. As project organiser for Butetown and Grangetown Neighbourhood Fund you will support the project aims, enabling core partners and intervention leads to fulfil the action plan and build a legacy for the long term. Alongside this, you will develop a craft of community organising, working closely with civic organisations based in the neighbourhoods, understanding local power and building partnerships with wider stakeholders, and developing local institutions and youth leaders.

All of this should ladder up to building the power of the broader Cardiff Citizens alliance.

You will embed the ethos of community organising across the project and its legacy by:

• developing the leadership of people within local organisations - our 'leaders' who lead the campaigns we work on
• helping them to collectively identify the changes they want to see and create strategies to win those changes
• strengthen institutions' own abilities to achieve their missions.
• Support leaders in connecting the hyperlocal work to the Cardiff Citizens alliance - developing their capacity to work with other leaders and civic institutions across the city to develop collective ambitions and actions (leading up to the 2027 Local Authority elections).

We envisage the role to be roughly 2 days project management and 1 day Community Organising, but given the nature of the project, these will naturally bleed into one another.

Working as the Project Organiser for Citizens UK, your main responsibilities will include:

Career Pathways Headings

Build and manage projects and achieve work targets effectively

• Project manage the YEF/Citizens UK Neighbourhood Fund project in the neighbourhoods of Butetown and Grangetown
• Support the delivery of four interventions (Mental health, ALN & Literacy/Sports and Police action team) including due diligence, accountability, measurement and impact monitoring.
• Ensure good governance; setting up stakeholder meetings and working with community leaders to develop the agenda and actions
• Develop an understanding of place-based systems change and support system behaviours across the project, including feedback, collaborative leadership and shared power

Develop and manage external relationships

• Maintain and extend local relationships and partnerships with community and civic organisations and wider statutory power
• Map and develop an ecosystem of strategic relationships at the local level
• Ensure the YEF work is embedded within the local ecosystem of support for young people.

Communications

• Support the interventions with communicating the impact of their work individually and collectively
• Create comms outputs that communicate the work of the YEF project for internal and external…