Ideal time commitment: approx. 10-15 hours per month; flexible.
Responsible to: the Community Engagement Trustee.
Bi Pride UK’s mission is to create spaces where people who experience attraction beyond gender can be freely visible and celebrate themselves and their identities. It’s not enough to be ‘welcome’ at a Pride. We make up a very large proportion of the GRSD (Gender, Romantic and Sexual Diversity) community – many stats actually say we’re over half the community – and we deserve to be visible and celebrated in our own right.
There are many ways to make this happen, and we work in many ways to bring this change about:
- Outreach work with other Prides, LGBT organisations and bi organisations – our consultation work with local Prides, the UK Pride Organisers Network and local and national LGBT organisations works in a tailored way to make sure that bi-inclusion is a top priority and is being done well.
- Organising a high-profile annual Bi Pride event – from September 2019, Bi Pride UK made history with the largest ever gathering of bi people recorded. A performance stage, a panel stage, stall village, street food, and over 1,300 attendees. After going virtual with the BiFi Festival for 2020 due to Covid-19 and running a virtual Pride event in 2021, we are looking forward to being back in person in 2022.
- Building a strong online and virtual community – just as important as the rest of our work is making sure that people hear about it! People need to know what resources and spaces exist for them, and how they can connect with other people like them.
The role:
We are looking for a volunteer to lead our Education and Outreach department, a team spanning our local engagement volunteers around the country, our Prides engagement work across the UK, our corporate training offering, and a research and impact function evaluating our work. This is an exciting opportunity to take on a new challenge of building up a cohesive and wide-ranging team which delivers a vital part of our charity’s strategic work.
We attended 30 Prides in 2019, and 27 in 2018; attending Prides has always been a very important part of our engagement with bi communities and beyond across the UK, and our presence at Prides offers a space and a recognition for people attracted beyond gender which they may not otherwise have at the Pride event. The virtual world we have been in since the beginning of the pandemic has posed new challenges for this area of work, and as events return to physical, we want to ensure that we are able to learn from the past few years to deepen our community engagement both in person and remotely. This will be an interesting challenge for our new Head of Education and Outreach.
Also sitting within this team is our work to build relationships and partnerships with grassroots bi organisations operating throughout the country, local and national GRSD organisations, and LGBT netowrks and DEI functions within national and multinational businesses. This is an area with a lot of potential to expand, and the partnerships our Head of Education and Outreach will spearhead us developing will be crucial to this work.
The Head of Education and Outreach will be responsible for leading the direction of this department, thinking strategically about how to maximise impact in this area and managing the teams to deliver against key objectives. Day-to-day responsibilities of the Head include:
- Building new networks of collaborations with other engagement teams in GRSD charities and organisations;
- Researching and suggesting partnerships and opportunities for growth for the organisation;
- Delegating budgets to various teams in the Education and Outreach department;
- Setting strategic targets and workflows for the operational year for the collective department and each team;
- Growing the team and supporting with interviewing volunteers for management of teams and volunteers within individual teams;
- Approving proposals and pitches from teams in the education and outreach department.
Our team volunteers remotely from anywhere in the UK, with some travel required occasionally (primarily for our flagship Pride event in London in September). Our Trustees and Heads meetings take place via conference call on the third Monday evening of every month. All reasonable expenses incurred are reimbursed, including travel, lunch at away days and other all day events, and some childcare costs if required.
Volunteer specification:
- Interest and passion for tackling discrimination against and improving the visibility of people in the UK who experience attraction to more than one gender;
- An understanding of the needs of bi people and communities in the UK;
- Commitment to the aims and objectives of Bi Pride UK;
- A creative problem solver, always seeking solutions;
- A team player who is ready to get stuck in with an awesome charity team;
- Meticulous attention to detail;
- Ability to self-motivate when working remotely;
- Strong written and oral communication skills;
- Some experience of developing and/or delivering educational resources and programming relating to identity and/or sexuality;
- Confidence in developing and leading community-building programmes and projects;
- Experience of managing a team delivering on multiple areas;
- Able to communicate confidently, coherently and sensitively on complex issues of identity;
- Strong understanding of the complexity of identity, power dynamics and privilege.
Applying
The position is open to anyone over the age of 18. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds, especially minority groups such as applicants of colour, trans and non-binary applicants and disabled applicants. Bi Pride UK is aware of the barriers that can be faced in gaining traditional work experience, particularly for BAME, disabled and trans people. We will give weight to this and encourage people when applying to consider caring responsibilities, including parenthood, volunteering, and other non-paid experiences and responsibilities when making their application.