Movement Building Lead

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Role purpose

To enable people from all walks of life to build power and take nonviolent action in order to shift the UK public to support Animal Freedom

About the Role

This Lancaster-based role aims to lead the work of building the social movement that will shift how people all over the UK take action for Animal Freedom.

Within our Social Movement Operations team, you will work with a group of fellow Community Organisers to enable everyday people to campaign and form groups that build power for animals in their communities. Our Community Organisers draw primarily on the work of Marshall Ganz and the Ayni Institute to build a movement inspired by past efforts like the Civil Rights and Indian Independence movements.

Role accountabilities

  

    • Building a team of skilled community organisers

    • Identifying potential volunteer leaders

    • Recruiting volunteer leaders

    • Developing volunteer leaders by running trainings, providing coaching and other support

    • Activating volunteer leaders by supporting them in forming their own groups and taking action

Key Projects

Initially, some top priority projects of the role will be…

1: Setting up the movement’s first groups

Background: This project involves using 1:1 relational organising methods to set up the first groups of a social movement in the Lancaster & Morecambe area. We are currently seeking to set up groups to run community campaigns within a prominent Lancaster institution. Within a framework of structure-based organising, we will connect with communities and work with volunteer leaders to craft campaigns that speak to their interests whilst contributing towards Animal Freedom.

2: Helping to develop a plan for how the movement will spread across the country

Background: We are intent on our movement having hundreds of volunteer-led groups all over the country, and on those groups involving a broad and diverse set of people – younger people, older people, people from across the political spectrum, religious and non-religious and so on. As a Community Organiser, you will play a key role in helping us understand the methods we’ll need to use to scale effectively.

Who we are looking for

It’s essential that:

  • You have skill and knowledge in community organising

  • You believe in the power of everyday people to change the world

  • You’re eager to build the lasting community power needed to win Animal Freedom

  • You can commit to an organisation engaged with nonviolent civil disobedience

Ideal, but not essential:

  • You have experience doing community organising for “ally movements” (e.g. refugees, non-human animals, or other solidarity work)

  • You have experience in animal advocacy

  • You are familiar with Momentum-driven Organising as described in This Is An Uprising by Mark & Paul Engler

 

You shouldn’t take this role if…

  • You prefer to do the work yourself, rather than empowering community members to take action

  • You are not open to building an Animal Freedom movement that creates space for people of different values and backgrounds (including non-vegans/vegetarians and people of different political leanings) to participate