VACANCY – SESSIONAL COMMUNITY GARDENER
REAP are looking to recruit a part-time, sessional community gardener to work in the Buckie/ Keith /Fochabers area schools and communities as part of our Community Growing team at REAP and ‘You Choose’ School Gardens Project. Community gardener will work with the participating schools to plan, set up, revitalise and grow food in school gardens, involving the local community to prepare and share local produce (working within what is possible under covid-19 guidelines in place at the time). There may also be the opportunity to work in Keith over the summer holidays in community projects.
- Contract type: fixed-term contract, start on 1st May (the latest) until the end of October 2021
- Hours: 60 hrs per contract, divided on a flexible basis between 5-6 local schools sites
- Hourly rate: £11.50 per hour plus holiday entitlement (28 days per annum pro rata) paid monthly in arrears on submission of a timesheet.
- Reporting to: REAP Manager
- There may be an opportunity to work some extra 20-30 hours supporting REAP community projects in Keith over the school summer holidays in addition to the above. This cannot be fully confirmed yet due to Covid-19 restrictions.
May well suit a university student during holidays/ finishing their course and hoping to gain experience in the third sector/ community /education work.
Duties
- Liaising with the schools and the community/parents in the school’s area to develop an action plan for each school
- Carrying out the work – making raised beds, weeding, organising classes to grow seedlings, sowing seeds etc with designated classes/ groups in the school plus staff/ community support
- Helping the school to organise the community feast/ harvest/ tag on to community event with the community
- Delivering on the project targets – to get more people/ schoolchildren eating local healthy food in their community
- Working to best practice guidelines under REAP’s policies and procedures, including risk assessment, code of conduct, Health and Safety. Please note that a valid PVG scheme membership is required for this post.
- Contributing to evaluation and monitoring tasks – collating figures, questionnaires and feedback/ quotes for the report
Essential qualities/ person specification
- Experience of community work and engagement skills
- Enjoy/ experience in working with schools and schoolchildren
- Gardening experience
- Good general level of education – standard grades or above
- Good at setting up and engaging with groups
- Polite, personable and non-judgemental
- Able to manage own time and workload
- Driving licence and access to vehicle
- Competent Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills for reporting
- Experience of working to organisational guidelines, code of conduct, policies and procedures
HOW TO APPLY:
Please read the duties and person essential qualities and email us a letter to ann2@reapscotland.org.uk detailing how you fit with these, and how you look forward to helping in our project. Please attach to your letter the completed Equal Opportunities Form which you can download here.
Deadline: We’d need to hear from you by Tuesday, April 20th.
What next: We’ll get back to you by email Friday 23rd April – if you don’t hear from us by then, please assume that you have not been successful on this occasion.