Community Engagement Coordinator for Kenosha, Racine, and Milwaukee Counties

Community Engagement Coordinator for Kenosha, Racine, and Milwaukee Counties

Common Agency is a social enterprise that helps people collectively organize their neighborhoods to become places we’re proud to grow up and grow old in. We do this through our ‘Stone Soup’ approach, based on the folk tale, where hungry travellers use a stone to inspire a village to make and share delicious soup together. In our version of Stone Soup, we help people set up a neighborhood fund and online network, to encourage neighbors to host activities to build relationships and propose ideas to act on opportunities in their communities. We believe that our work is the ‘stone,’ and the neighbors we partner with bring the ingredients and co-author the stories that make the soup, which is the real magic.

We’re a distributed team based in Michigan, Iowa, and Washington. While we’ve made plenty of trips to Wisconsin, we’re looking for someone based in southeast Wisconsin and passionate about connecting neighbors to build belonging and power together, to help us deepen our work in Kenosha, Racine, and Milwaukee Counties.

The Community Engagement Coordinator’s primary role is to be the on-the-ground lead for Common Agency’s Stone Soup pilots in 3 neighborhoods in Kenosha, Racine, and Milwaukee Counties as part of our work with Uniting to Prevent Targeted Violence in Southeast Wisconsin. If you join our team, you’d work in partnership with local ‘Stewards’ in our 3 partner neighborhoods to:

• Design and host fun and purposeful Stone Soup events that bring neighbors together across differences
• Reach out to neighbors through door knocking, flyering, tabling, posting to local social media, etc.
• Invite neighbors to participate in the online network and activities to help co-design a ‘neighborhood fund’ for neighbors to allocate money together
• Give extra attention to neighbors who may not normally attend community events and meetings, or have technical trouble with the online network
• Document stories of what’s happening in each neighborhood as a result of our work
• Support Stewards with coordination and advising

This is a part-time contract role that we believe is an amazing opportunity for the right person. We think that person will likely have these characteristics:

• Experienced and admired event host/facilitator. You like getting creative with your gatherings in all stages – inviting, preparing, hosting, documenting, and following up. People (both adults and children!) never want to miss your events.
• Open to trying new things. You’re excited to experiment with new ideas, and you can design quick ways to test bigger processes. You like to ask questions and receive feedback to iterate until you find the right fit.
• Curious about people and their gifts. You love going to community events and can strike up conversations with any neighbor. You love discovering what people love, what they dream about, and what they’re skilled at.
• Connect people across differences. You’ve navigated difficult conversations and conflicts before. You see disagreements as a way to better understand other perspectives and embrace the phrase ‘arguing to agree.’
• Hopeful about the potential of neighborhood. You believe neighborhoods are an under-leveraged unit of change. You’ve been part of groups of neighbors coming together to solve something meaningful in your neighborhood.
• Reliable team player and leader. You enjoy collaborating with others to make and commit to plans and follow ups. You know your weakness and strengths and communicate openly when you need support and experience success!

This role’s compensation is $20-30/hour, depending on experience. We expect this contract role will take 5-10 hours per week for 6 months, with possibility of renewal.