Position Post Date: November 22, 2023
Accepting Applications Until: December 8, 2023
A creative, ambitious and savvy communicator who will support Namati’s work on land and environmental justice and help shape and support the future of Grassroots Justice Network communications.
About Namati
Since 2011, Namati has worked to build a movement of grassroots justice advocates worldwide. We’ve grown tremendously, from a small founding group of big-hearted change-makers to a global staff of 170+ people across 12 time zones in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The Grassroots Justice Network, which Namati convenes, has grown from 30 people in one room to the world’s largest community of justice advocates. Our 14,000 members, spanning 175 countries, are building power together to make grassroots justice a reality.
Namati has supported local communities to take on thousands of justice issues, directly improving the lives of over 1.5 million people since our founding. Together with communities, partners, and Network members, we’ve envisioned, and won, transformative changes across our country programs and beyond.
Namati has been featured in the New York Times, The Washington Post, the American Journal of Law and Equity, TED, The Economist, Amanpour & Co., and The Guardian, among other outlets.
About the Position
We’re searching for a Communications Officer with a strong interest in land, environmental, and climate justice to join our growing Global Communications team. This person will help us create new communications assets, and improve existing ones, that will foster collaboration and increase engagement with our work on land and environmental justice. This person will also showcase how members of the Grassroots Justice Network are using the power of law and organizing to advance justice around the world.
To be effective, the messaging and content must not only reach our audiences, but resonate with our target audiences. The materials the Communications Officer produces must be clear, visually and linguistically compelling, inclusive of our members, and framed to address the needs and interests of our diverse community. We are seeking someone with the ability to curate news, opportunities and stories from a variety of sources in an efficient and effective manner, while ensuring streamlined communication with network members.
This position will work closely with Network members and Namati teams across multiple time zones. The person hired for this role will be asked to schedule ~2 days per week of evening work time to allow for global team communication and collaboration, and will be expected to go into the Kenya office at least 2 days a week.
Reporting to one of Namati’s Senior Communications Officers, the Communications Officer will hold the following primary responsibilities:
Develop and implement communication assets for Network members to engage with the Land and Environmental Justice (LEJ) initiative (65%):
Responsibilities include: becoming deeply familiar with the LEJ initiative, managing various parts of the strategic direction and movement vision, creating unique content that inspires our community, and building relationships with Network members (in multiple languages, with translation tools provided). Examples include:
- Curate content for a monthly LEJ newsletter and lead the internal process – from drafting to publishing.
- Support periodic social media campaigns (e.g. #TheVoicesWeNeed) which could include drafting post copy and graphics.
- Contribute to quarterly movement calls – planning, content, technical support. Our movement calls average around 100+ Network members per call.
- Manage WhatsApp groups to ensure ongoing and in-depth engagement in the community.
- Develop and implement new ways to support and encourage Network members to develop content on behalf of the Network.
Help to launch and manage social media for the Grassroots Justice Network (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn) (20%):
- Curate, create, and publish unique content for all social media channels for the Network; working with the Senior Communications Officer, help to ensure clear and consistent messaging, branding, and quality of content.
- Manage social media channels in a way that is driven by key goals of the Network, and incorporates members’ needs into the process.
- Ensure the social media channels are useful for members by directly consulting them, co-creating with them, and taking into account their needs from the channels.
- Help ensure the process of creating as well as sharing content with the Network team and Network members is streamlined. Coordinate among your team and network members to ensure everyone is aware of the process and their roles.
- Create and maintain a monthly social media calendar (using Asana) to ensure balanced content, including drafting text and creating graphics.
- Consistently analyze the performance of the social media posts and channel growth and report back on the performance with thoughtful suggestions on how to improve, if need be.
Create unique content and messaging, and provide planning support, for periodic land and environmental justice advocacy moments and shared learning opportunities (10%):
- Support the creation of advocacy tools (e.g. targeted social media engagement campaigns, event flyers, talking points for Network members)
- Create tools and assets for shared learning opportunities
Ensure alignment with, and contribute to, Global Communications strategy & processes (5%):
- Ensure that Network and LEJ initiative communications are in alignment with Global Communications overall strategic goals and processes (e.g. following shared protocols, collaborating with Global Comms team members for strategic and creative input and collaboration, maintaining brand consistency, developing messaging and content consistent with organizational aims and positioning, etc.)
- Contribute to the integration and capacity building of communications across the organization (e.g. sharing lessons from Network communications efforts with program teams and other comms colleagues, providing input on shared comms resources and other relevant comms efforts).
- As a member of the Global Communications team, which collaborates with all teams and programs, provide general comms support, as needed.
Here’s what you might have tackled last week:
- Alongside the Director, Land and Environmental Justice Initiative, sourced content for the next LEJ newsletter and drafted the initial copy. Diligently kept to the internal processes and deadlines to ensure timely delivery.
- Ahead of COP 28, strategized around a live engagement opportunity featuring Network members in attendance. Working with the Global Comms and Network team, drafted a time-stamped run of show including speaking points, technical details, speaker roles, etc.
- Worked with the Senior Officer, Social Media and Content Creation to develop a strategy around #thevoicesweneed campaign, leading up to New York Climate Week.
- Interviewed Network members about how their work has impacted their community and turned that content into compelling social media posts.
- Created a plan to capitalize on an in-person learning activity hosted by the Network, to gather high quality content for social media.
- Using Asana, populated a content calendar for November social media posts, including strategically balancing content that aligns with Namati and the Network’s priority objectives and culture. Created eye-catching social media graphics in Canva, using brand guidelines and existing templates, to accompany the text.
- After watching a rough cut of a new video, shared your reflections with the Global Comms and Network teams about how to improve it and how to align the messaging more closely with organizational goals.
About You
- Track record of excellence in digital communications: You have a minimum of 3 years’ experience in social media marketing or digital communications. You are a skilled and versatile writer who believes in the power of language to tell important stories. You’re known for succinct, clear, compelling prose – your writing is simple and accessible while attentive to nuance.
- Deep sense of ownership and responsibility: You epitomize reliability, and you’ve always been recognized as the person whom others inherently trust to get the job done quickly and accurately. You are an independent, energetic team player.
- Creativity grounded in pragmatism and collaboration: You often see opportunities in not-so-obvious places and in unexpected ways, from creating a new engagement opportunity for Network members to developing a powerful social media campaign. You are able to get others excited about your idea and find a way to bring it to life.
- A global outlook: You are comfortable – and have experience – working with people from a variety of backgrounds and with different levels of access to resources and opportunities.
- Efficiency and skilled process management: You work quickly and efficiently and can churn out excellent, on-point communications assets in short timeframes — you always nail deadlines. You manage collaborative processes confidently and efficiently: you know how to work with input from a variety of people, while maintaining quality, scope, and timeliness.
- Technologically savvy: You have experience working with technology from video conferencing to project management systems to creative design programs. When working with a new program or application you quickly become fluent.
Nice to haves:
- Experience in land, environmental, and climate reporting and/or campaigning; experience working with members of other networks and/or movement building
- Knowledge of Hubspot, Canva, Adobe products (Premiere Pro, Illustrator, Photoshop), WordPress, Canto and/or Asana
- Proficiency in French and/or Spanish
- Experience with graphic design, photography and videography
We always look for incoming staff to be:
- Collaborative and service-oriented: You greet everyone you encounter with a collaborative spirit, kindness, and empathy. You are known as a team-player who brings an “all hands on deck” mindset to all projects — you’re happy to contribute however you can to advance Namati’s mission.
- Nimble, creative, problem-solving: Although careful planning and execution define your work, you are positive and graceful when unexpected challenges arise. You quickly reorient and identify the best new course of action.
- Growth oriented: You’re always seeking to better yourself and your work, and you will push yourself to the peak of performance to help fulfill our mission. In service of that growth, you welcome and delight in feedback from supervisors, peers, and anyone else.
Location
The Communications Officer will be based in Nairobi, Kenya.
As noted above, the successful candidate will be expected to occasionally work non-standard hours to accommodate the various time zones of Namati’s teams.
You must already have work authorization in the location you’ll work from (Namati cannot sponsor visas).
Compensation
The offer range for this position is an annual compensation of 3,130,000 – 3,665,000 KES. Final compensation will be commensurate with the depth of experience that the selected candidate brings. Namati also offers excellent benefits, which include health coverage, generous paid time off, retirement or old-age plan contributions, sick leave, and parental leave. All staff also have access to funds for professional development opportunities.
To Apply
Please apply via our website. The application deadline is Friday, December 8, 2023, after which applications will be reviewed and select applicants will be invited to participate in the interview process.
No phone calls, please. Namati is an Equal Opportunity Employer.