Overview:

Hua foundation is a youth empowerment non-profit working on racial equity and civic engagement issues on unceded territories and lands, in particular, those of the three title-holding Nations: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Our work lives at the intersection of cultural heritage and social change. Our roots are in Vancouver’s Chinatown and we have been working for years alongside youth and community members from the Asian diaspora.

The Language Access Project (LAP) will address the growing need for cultural competency and language accessibility from all levels of government and public institutions, by sharing knowledge and creating space for collaboration between community experts and institutional staff. 

While our short term aim is to work collaboratively towards better language policy, our hope is that this process will create long lasting relationships between communities and institutions, that extend beyond the end of the project. Our goal is to support ongoing work highlighting systemic barriers, to increase language accessibility and cultural sensitivity in civic engagement, and to enable full participation for those who face these barriers, through an illustrative toolkit and a Community of Practice.

A Community of Practice (CP) is a group of people who share a common concern, a set of problems, or an interest in a topic and who come together to fulfill both individual and group goals. CP’s meet regularly over an extended period of time to share knowledge and experiences, provide feedback and soundboarding space, and work together towards common learning goals. 

Our goal is to convene a cohort of regional communications and engagement professionals with a shared desire to improve processes for working with non-English speaking language communities. 

Description:

For the LAP, hua foundation is hiring a part time Coordinator to steward and support activities associated with the Community of Practice. The Coordinator will work under the supervision of the LAP Project Lead, with the support of additional LAP team staff, providing logistical and planning support for 9 CP sessions over the course of one year: 5 virtual and 4 in-person sessions in the Metro Vancouver region. 

This position is supervised by the LAP Project Lead and hua foundation manager of operations + special projects, Christina Lee. Where unavailable, this position reports to hua foundation executive director, Kevin Huang. 

This contract is for majority remote work, but will require some in-person coordination for in-person sessions. In the case that the Coordinator is required to be on-site and interacting with the public, hua foundation will provide appropriate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and a Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) kit. As per hua foundation’s organizational COVID-19 policies (available on request), the Coordinator is required to be fully vaccinated. In-person events are subject to the latest government health policies, and will be under ongoing evaluation for the health and safety of our most vulnerable community members.  

Responsibilities:

• Work with the Project Lead to understand the project context and goals;
• Schedule and book sessions, including securing venues and catering where needed;
• Work with session facilitator and CP cohort members to support session design;
• Provide support to the facilitator during sessions (e.g. managing breakout rooms, addressing accessibility needs);
• Oversee LAP support staff (notetaker, additional logistics support); and,
• Develop an internal infrastructure for file-sharing and communication between sessions.

Skills & Assets:

• Experience coordinating and scheduling professional development events (virtual and in-person);
• Strong fluency in asynchronous work systems and platforms (Slack, Google Workspace) and online work environments (Zoom);
• Experience in fostering and organizing groups, clubs, and or communities (in-person or online);
• Proactive, driven, and able to delegate and assign tasks;
• Familiarity with communications and engagement, and the regional language accessibility context; and,
• Interest in public policy development.

Working Hours:

This contract begins in early April. It is expected that the workload will approximate 15 hours per month, over the course of one year:

• 4 hours – attendance and coordination of CP sessions
• 5 hours – planning, correspondence
• 5 hours – meetings
• 1 hour – administration

By nature, this position will require some availability during standard daytime working hours (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm), exact timing to be determined. CP sessions will occur on Wednesday afternoons on the following dates:

• April 19, 2023
• May 17, 2023
• June 14, 2023 (in-person)
• September 20, 2023 (in-person)
• October 18, 2023
• November 15, 2023 (in-person)
• January 17, 2024
• February 21, 2024
• March 20, 2024 (in-person)

Compensation:

This contract will be for a maximum of 180 hours, at a rate of $30.00 / hour, with the possibility of contract extension/expansion if there is a shared interest and capacity. The contractor will be responsible for tracking their hours and submitting invoices. 

Applications:

Please submit an expression of interest (no more than 1-page) and resume as one PDF to christina@huafoundation.org, with the subject line: “Coordinator – Community of Practice, First Name Last Name”. In your email, please indicate your availability for interviews between March 20-21, 2023. Interview candidates will receive notification by email, by EOD March 15, 2023.

Deadline to apply is Friday, March 10 @ 5pm PST.