This is a rare opportunity to join our wonderful team of orchardists to help bring community orchards to London, as a paid intern. We are a friendly team of 14 people, 8 in our London office, who all work part-time, and are keen to help people develop their skills and gain experience that will be useful to them longer term. We guarantee you will have a great time with us and come away with lots of relevant experience.
The need
The Orchard project have an increasing need to grow our public visibility and build our supporter network in order to grow the impact that we can have. This is already happening in a number of ways including our membership scheme and our upcoming Radio 4 appeal but we have identified a gap in our communications on a day to day basis in promoting what we do at The Orchard Project.
The role
You will lead on developing a plan for how we promote our events and training opportunities, and then implement this over the year to increase engagement in our work. You would also be involved with creating content for our social media platforms and training courses which will involve filming and editing (for which training will be given if you do not have experience). We want you to look at the different ways that we promote ourselves at present and think of where we could do better, we are open to new ideas of doing things differently! There is also scope for you to attend any of the public training days that we deliver to help to develop your skills and knowledge around community orchards. The opportunity will be funded by and part of the Time to Shine Leadership Programme run by The Rank Foundation.
How this might break-down:
Developing a marketing plan for our public events and then implement it by:
- Attending some of our orchard events to assist the event leader and understand our work better.
- Travel up to Manchester to meet our communications manager and understand more about the overall communications strategy and to do training.
- Look at how we currently promote our work and come up with ideas of how we could do this better, thinking about the different strands of our work which include; paid for training, volunteers days, our cider and juice enterprise and our Radio 4 appeal which is happening in May 2020.
- Promote our paid-for training courses across the UK in order to increase sign up numbers and be the first point of contact for people until they sign-up.
- Update our public channels with new events so that they can be promoted eg uploading details to Eventbrite, our website and social media.
- Support with drafting newsletters and blogs for our supporters incorporating news from the team.
- Increase public awareness of where people can buy our cider and support the launch of our new product.
- Work with our communications manager to come up with a plan for our Radio 4 appeal happening in May 2020 and then implement the plan together.
- Support with keeping our media presence up to date where relevant to the role, including: the website, and social media, such as Twitter and Instagram feeds.
- Update our photo library to pick out the strongest images to use in our communications.
- Represent The Orchard Project at festivals, events, market stalls and meetings along with other members of our team.
Essential skills that we are looking for:
- A strong interest in communications/marketing with some relevant experience
- Enjoy writing and thinking of different ways to represent ideas
- Passionate about making a positive difference to urban communities
- An interest in local food and a strong desire to learn more about urban fruit growing
- Passionate about the environment and solutions for creating positive change
- Good organisational and logistical skills
- Self-motivated with good initiative
- Strong communication and interpersonal skills and the ability to work as part of a team
- Good IT skills, including word processing, email and social media
Benefits
An internship with us brings the following benefits:
- Paid at London Living Wage for the year (works out at a salary of approx £19,000).
- Paid holiday time of 23 days per year if full-time plus bank holidays on top of this.
- Access to The Orchard Project’s well-being programme of £25/month.
- Part of The Time to Shine Leadership programme which includes residential leadership training opportunities and the chance to network with peers doing the programme at other organisations.
- A training budget of £300 per year and access to relevant training opportunities.
- Employers’ references, where appropriate and experience for your CV.
- Make a lasting impact on the urban environment and communities that we work with.
- Boost your confidence and increase versatility by meeting different kinds of people.
- Develop transferable office skills which could be used in different places of work.
- Weekly support and supervision.
- Learn new skills in a fun and supportive environment.
The Time to Shine Leadership Programme
The Rank Foundation’s Time to Shine Programme has been running for almost a decade. Each year, a cohort of Time to Shine leaders are funded to develop their skills and talents within a charity or social enterprise that the foundation already supports. The Rank Foundation is working in partnership with the National Lottery Community Fund to co-fund the Time to Shine Leadership Programme.
The programme helps organisations develop an aspect of work, so that they can better meet the needs of service users and the wider community, in a sustainable way. The host organisation benefits from a new and motivated member of staff, bringing fresh skills and perspectives. At the same time, the Time to Shine leader gets a chance to demonstrate and develop their talents by completing a time-limited and skill-based work placement offering meaningful experience in the voluntary sector. Theer are some residential opportunities as part of the programme which the chosen candidate would be required to attend.
Does this sound interesting?
Further information from Abby – abby@theorchardproject.org.uk 07714 745404
To apply please send Abby your CV and a supporting letter of up to one page to tell us more about you and your interest in the role.
Deadline: Sunday 3rd November
Initial interview date: Monday 11th November
The final job offer would be confirmed by The Rank Foundation following a meeting with Rank Foundation, The Orchard Project and the final shortlisted candidate at a date still to be confirmed in November.