Title: Community, Communications, and Outreach, (Program Assistant)
Status: Full-time, Employee
Location: Nairobi, Kenya
Reports to: Knowledge and Engagement Program Lead, Code for Africa
Travel: Occasional domestic and regional travel as required
Who We Are:
Code for Africa is the continent’s largest independent open data and civic technology initiative. Our federation of partners in 20+ countries seek to build digital democracies that give citizens timely and unfettered access to actionable information that empowers them to make informed decisions and that strengthens civic engagement for improved public governance and accountability.
About the Role:
As the Code for Africa Community, Communications, and Outreach Program Assistant, you are a storyteller first, who is comfortable working with various online tools and platforms to extract the story and coalesce the Code for Africa community around our shared values and work in the civic technology, digital media and data journalism space.
You serve in a support role for our Knowledge and Engagement programs. You will work directly with the Code for Africa Knowledge and Engagement Program Lead, to provide cross-functional community, communications, and outreach support.
You will also get to work with multiple teams in different time zones to coordinating outreach across our Hacks/Hackers chapters in Africa. Hacks/Hackers Africa is the umbrella group for African chapters of Hacks/Hackers, where news pioneers experiment with ways to rewire the media.
Specific Responsibilities:
The Code for Africa community is growing, and we will rely on you to support Community, Communications, and Outreach to ensure consistency across our messaging, events and outreach campaigns in the following ways:
- Draft messaging for the Code for Africa communication channels, including social media, and updating community via the newsletter.
- Support online and offline outreach activities and campaigns support across Code for Africa and it’s communities’ projects, apps, tools and platforms ensuring a strong online presence for the Code for Africa community
- Help review and collaborate on the weekly newsletter, write and publish value-added content across different mediums including blog posts on Medium and social media
- Develop and track agreed upon metrics with input from the Knowledge and Engagement Lead
- Identify and collaborate with the Code for Africa community to develop, write, edit, and distribute content and ensure all content is consistent in terms of style, quality and tone of voice, and optimized for search and social promotion
- Events communication , marketing and branding support and when necessary, serve as a reporter at live events to create content
- Manage the Program’s content calendar, and maintain and update a schedule of ongoing communications campaigns and programs
- Support coordination of the of the Hacks/Hackers communities city chapters outreach activities
- Support the creation and updating of programme manuals / documentation directly with the Knowledge and Engagement Lead
- Support in-country teams to drive engagement and champion Code for Africa tools in newsrooms to drive engagement on the stories / tools
Ideal Qualifications
Must have:
- Exceptionally strong verbal and written communication skills
- Proven track record of digital engagement, online community building and content creation experience for multiple online platforms e.g creating compelling, interesting content to support Social Media campaigns
- Evidence of strong execution skills on all aspects of content development: idea generation, research, writing, gathering input and buy in, editing, collaborating with designers and developers
- Experience working with large online communities
- Experience organising community events
- Creative thinker / creativity
- Working with online CMS systems such as WordPress
Good to Have:
- A genuine love to write, a handle on Oxford commas and a good command of the English language
- An interest in civic technology and digital and data journalism are a plus
- Ability to communicate ideas effectively and efficiently
- Disciplined work ethic: a healthy respect for deadlines, with an ability to initiate and follow through on assignments with attention to detail
- All round problem solver
- Ability to handle multiple projects simultaneously
- Ability to work in and add value to a global & multicultural team
- An ability to turn ideas into compelling concepts/copy, and experience finding avenues for distributing and sharing content where the target audience will find it
- Video and Event Production (Audio & Video) – including live streaming of events
- Fluency in spoken / written French not a must, but nice to have
The position is contract based, for an initial 12 months, renewable for further one year periods, with remuneration subject to experience / seniority. The successful candidate will be expected to start as soon as possible, but no later than 15 May 2017, on an initial three month probationary contract.
How to Apply:
Sound like you?
Apply to join@codeforafrica.org and include:
- A compelling case(s) (be as creative as you’d like), with clear showcase of skills and past experience
- Portfolio of completed projects / campaigns demonstrating your role in each and achieved outcomes / results
- Your resume
Sounds interesting, but not sure you tick all the boxes? Please apply – we emphasize teaching and learning at Code for Africa , and there’s tons of room to grow.
About Code for Africa: (long version)
Code for Africa is the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism initiative. It seeks to instill a culture of civic innovation and digital experimentation in newsrooms and other civic watchdogs.
It also incubates investigative and citizen journalism initiatives, using its networks to work with partners in the media, civil society, the private sector and governments. The goal is to seed new ideas and technologies that deepen public accountability, civic transparency and citizen engagement.
It is funded by a basket of international donors, including the Omidyar Network, the World Bank, various regional Open Society Foundations, and a variety of smaller donors. While Code for Africa focuses its work on the continent, it regularly collaborates with like-minded initiatives across Asia, Europe and Latin America. You can join the CfAfrica community here.