Hello everyone,
I'm sharing this job announcement from a dear friend who runs Food Moxie in Philly. Sorry it's so lengthy but please read or share with anyone you know who might meet the mission. Thank you!
_________
Below is my alternative, out of the spotlight, very honest job description for a new job my org (Food Moxie) is hiring for. If you know any good people who this might be a good fit for even in the short term, please send them my way. I would be their boss, and we would work together with a small team of two other educators, a manager who supports ops, some interns/fellows, other helpful volunteers, and a Leeway Artist in residency. You can snoop me and the team on our bio page. Please feel free to forward this email. It would be an honor to work with a new, great person.
____________
Position Details and Application: Growing Space Manager and Educator
I won't lie, our org is a mess that we are slowly trying our best to clean; the staff and program participants are wonderful and the money is very good for the farm world.
Salary is $37,500 for a year round position that's only 25-30 hours / week during weekdays (you would VERY VERY RARELY be asked to come in at night or on a weekend, maybe a couple times a year for a special event). You'd also get medical benefits (vision, dental, health), 401k match, professional training/development, and a lot of paid time off throughout the year. Something nearing about 1.5 - 2 months of PTO in total, spread between times when the whole org is off (For example 3 weeks in the winter) and your own flexible vacation/sick time.
You would manage about an acre of land with a greenhouse in East Germantown that serves the local high school students (MLK HS), the families in an emergency housing shelter next door, and the larger community through food distribution (we send food to Double Trellis and are working on a community farmer market at the school). 98% of the participants we serve are Black and brown and either live in the neighborhood permanently or are at the shelter for a few months to a few years as they search for permanent housing. The neighborhood also has a very large Caribbean community, in addition to being multigenerational. The program participants and partners want a farm manager who looks like them, can help them reconnect with culturally relevant plants and can relate to their experience. Participants range in age from preschool through adults. You'd work most intimately with Antoine, the Lead Educator who manages all the curriculum for the education. We really need someone with farm experience for whom things like pest management, small production growing, crop planning, harvesting, etc is not new.
You must be ok with entering some dual chaos, 1) Of the org itself: it's in transition as it works to create sensible, stable systems, a better board culture, a better way of managing work within the non profit industrial complex, and more clarity/boundaries in our relationship with the food Coop from which we were birthed. 2) Of working with complex but mostly lovely partners: the Philadelphia School District, OARC (a neighborhood revitalization org that owns the greenhouse), as well as the underfunded Stenton Family Manor, the 2nd largest emergency housing shelter in the city.
The work itself is very sweet but if you expect or need a lot of stable ops, policies and procedures before we can build them, if you will find it hard to be flexible with program partners who are exhausted and overwhelmed bc the world is on fire, or if you're just too tired to work in the non-profit industrial complex with all of it's ish, this probably isn't a good fit.
Most of the time you are just working on the land with our little team of radical, liberatory anti-capitalists and with program participants and it's nice.
I wouldn't say it's a dream because at times it can be exhausting, hard and frustrating with the challenges. On the plus side it does offer a lot of benefits, learnings, support, professional development/certifications and heartwarming moments. We are working in a very difficult system to build community in the community, around and with the land. And we are here to do the best we can while we can.
Happy to answer any questions.
Position Details and Application: Growing Space Manager and Educator