YOUTH DEVELOPMENT LEAD (MATERNITY COVER)

Do you want to work with a vibrant, dynamic and youth driven organisation that is committed to creating healthy futures for British children by improving the food system?

Be part of the creative, agile and growing team behind Bite Back 2030’s exceptional teenage activists. Join us as our Youth Development Lead and contribute to our journey to help make the food system healthier and fairer.  

You will play a pivotal role in ensuring our Youth Activists and Ambassadors are equipped to challenge the global food system and advocate for change. 

Responsibilities 

The Youth Development Lead is accountable for: 

• Providing ongoing operational, administrative and mentoring support to ensure the smooth and effective running of our youth engagement, including:

  • Organising and facilitating regular group meetings.  

  • Managing appropriate digital communication channels. 

  • Ensuring forums for engagement are engaging, fun, and tap into youth motivation. 

  • Planning and executing team and community building activities. 

  • Building a strong values-based culture, encouraging positivity, openness, collaboration and creativity. 

  • Developing progression and personal development opportunities for youth board members, as individuals and as a collective. 

  • Creating effective communication and collaboration channels with peers. 

  • Acting as the key point of contact for our Youth Board members, on standby to resolve any arising issues. 

• Ensuring that the highest level of safeguarding is upheld in all interactions with the Youth Board and Ambassadors, including the securing of consent forms, training of the young people for social media and media appearances, as well as liaising with partners, schools and parents/guardians.

• Taking steps, alongside the Head of Youth Activist Development to enable every young person to act as key representative of Bite Back, ensuring their needs, ideas, and strategic thinking is fed into wider organisational plans. 

• Supporting the design and delivery of training to empower 90 youth activists to aid us in activating our campaigns activities in a multitude of settings including media, policy, social media and public affairs. 

• Working effectively alongside the Head of Youth Activist Development and our colleagues in Communications and Brand on the recruitment and onboarding of the Youth Board Members. 

• Leading regular evaluations of the Youth Board programme, securing feedback from the youth activists on their experiences, and providing recommendations to shape strategy and approach in the future. 

The Youth Development Lead works closely with the Head of Youth Activist Development to ensure that we can provide a consistent and uplifting pathway for our youth activists. 

Skills and Experience 

The ideal candidate would have the following: 

Essential

• Experience working in youth engagement programmes in the UK. 

• Experience in designing and leading programmes and governance structures to empower young people. 

• Great project management, administration and operations experience, with the ability to manage multiple projects to tight deadlines to high quality. 

• Experience in building and maintaining partnerships (preferably with schools, youth networks and community groups).

• Outstanding people skills, with the ability to form strong relationships with young people.

• Excellent English language verbal and written communication skills. 

• Knowledge of key safeguarding principles. 

• Understanding of the basic principles of campaigning. 

Desirable

• Experience of empowering young people to lead campaigns targeting the government or business to make policy changes. 

• Experience of evaluating the success of youth programmes. 

• Experience of working on children’s health in the UK.  

• Experience of mentoring young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. 

• Good understanding of the cultural landscape of young people in the UK. 

Approach to Work

You will be able to show the following qualities: 

• A bold and open mind - you will be prepared to think differently about issues.

• A level head - you will be comfortable working both reactively and proactively. 

• A sense of humour - we believe work should be fun and that we all perform at our very best when we enjoy what we do.

• Creativity - you will come at issues from new and unusual angles and be prepared to work hard on finding fresh and surprising angles. 

• Resilience - you will be prepared to keep going or as our values say, set back won't set you back. 

• A passion for our mission.