Head of Movement Building and Policy (mat leave cover)
⚓ Location: Remote, you can be based anywhere
💰 Salary: £55k (pro rata)
⏰ Hours: 21-30 hours a week (open to negotiation) [30 hours/week is full time at Chayn]
🗓️ Duration: 7 months beginning in February 2024, with a possibility of extension up to a year.
👤 Reporting to: CEO
⏲️ DEADLINE: 15 December, 2023
We’re looking for a confident, creative, collaborative and proactive Movement Builder to join our team to work alongside our Chief Executive Officer, our Head of Operations, People and Finance, staff and volunteers. We have always put movement building at the heart of our work and this position will deliver on those ambitions and the targets set in our 2022-25 Strategy.
Chayn was started in 2013 by Hera Hussain. Hera helped two friends from the UK and Pakistan escape abusive marriages and experienced significant challenges in finding the basic information they needed, like their rights and how to cope with trauma. She thought if she could put critical information online in one place and accessible language it could change lives, which provided the inspiration to start Chayn. As one of the first organisations of its kind, Chayn bridges the gap between gender and tech to create online resources and services for survivors of abuse that are trauma-informed, intersectional, multi-lingual and feminist.
Chayn has championed a “design with, not for” approach. Up to 70% of volunteers are survivors of abuse themselves, so our services are made for survivors by survivors. We are experts in trauma-informed work and have developed trauma-informed design principles that we apply at every level of the organisation from HR through to user research, through to UX/UI. We are one of the few feminist technology projects tackling gender-based violence while creating and maintaining openly-licensed products and code.
While we’ve been going for nearly 10 years, Chayn was entirely volunteer-led until 2020 when we started to grow our team of paid staff. We are now a core team of 11, with up to 10 supporting contractors working together remotely from all over the world.
About the role
Chayn has the following strategic movement building targets to achieve by 2025:
- To deepen connections with the global gender-based violence and digital rights movement. Engage and work with 300 partner organisations between 2022 and 2025, with at least one third based in the Global South.
- To have a systemic impact on the wider gender-based violence movement by sharing its expertise and practices. Have an impact on 100 organisations between 2022 to 2025 through training or Community of Practice activities on trauma-informed practices, open source technology and intersectional, survivor-centric approaches, with at least one third based in the Global South.
- To continue to create and contribute to open knowledge. Publish 20 sector-focused resources (such as guidance, principles, research, impact reports) relevant to current practice and debates in the Violence Against Women or Technology Sector.
This role will be responsible for carrying on the work initiated by our Head of Movement Building and Policy, building on the strategy, and for contributing to the achievment of these targets. You’ll be expected to both carry out and oversee the work needed to deliver against them. We’ll be relying on this role to keep an overall perspective of all our partnerships and how they can work together. Responsibilities could include, but are not limited to:
- Maintaining existing relationships with partner organisations to work towards our mission
- Identifying new avenues for partnership
- Pursuing relationships with potential corporate partners and identifying new corporate partnerships
- Researching, writing, and publishing resources and thought-leadership that benefits the VAWG sector, technologists and policymakers
- Engaging with communities of best practice, sharing it with our team and keeping our work up to date on new learning
- Translate Chayn’s frontline experience into policy briefs to influence laws and debates around gender-based violence and tech abuse
- Leading and engaging with policy and campaigns to ensure intersectionality and an anti-violence lens is applied to technology
- Engage with policy conversations through events and meetings, as well as submissions to consultations
- Tracking impact data and collect stories from our community that demonstrate gaps and excellence in support
- Creating reports and organising briefing meetings for the funders supporting our movement building and policy work
- Managing Movement Building and Policy team members located globally
Your profile
We’re looking for someone proactive and creative, who enjoys working with a diverse set of people and organisations, including non-profits, survivor advocates, lawyers, grassroots campaign groups, policy makers, governments, politicians, academics, researchers, shelters and technologists. You will have a strong understanding of the way movements grow globally, shift power, and create change – especially with limited resources. This role will lead and deliver network-building practices that help us reach a wider audience; learn, document and share insights from our work; create partnerships to affect change for survivors; and engage with policy and campaigns to ensure intersectionality and an anti-violence lens is applied to technology.
We need someone confident working independently and with small teams, and with limited resources. This is a role where you can develop strategy, get involved with communities, talk to the media, and build strong relationships across all these areas. You’ll be skilled at dealing with high pressure situations with a positive attitude and tact.
It’s important that all team members have an understanding of intersectionality and systems of oppression and an affinity with Chayn’s aims and organisational values, which can be found here.
Essential
- 7+ years of movement building experience in a activist network or non-profit
- Proven strategic thinking and planning skills which have achieved both short and long-term goals
- Substantial experience leading a strategic programme of work which covers multiple projects or the entire organisation
- Exceptional verbal communication, listening, and interpersonal skills to create persuasive and empathetic messaging, and build trusting relationships
- Proven ability to move people through public speaking, workshop facilitation, and one-on-one conversations
- Experience of running Community of Practices
- Experience of establishing and managing external partnerships
- Understanding of the needs of survivors of domestic abuse, sexual assault and rape, and the ecosystem of support
- A history of working with volunteer-led movements either as a volunteer or a staff member
- Passion for fighting gender equality
- Experiencing with public speaking.
Desirable
- Experience or exposure to trauma-informed care
- Experience of project management methodologies, documentation and tools
- Experience of working within small, distributed teams
- Experience of working for diverse cultural and geographical audiences.
- Passion for the use of technology for good
- Experience with communications and social media management
- Experience with tech product marketing and sale