Employing people to support area meeting community
Hampshire & Islands Area Meeting – 11 Local Meetings and 2 Worshipping Groups – now has two new staff directly supporting its administration and outreach, each employed for 21 hours a week. These roles relieve pressure on roleholders and give Friends more time.
Hampshire and Islands Area Meeting discerned to recruit a Communications coordinator in response to reducing numbers of Quakers locally and across the Yearly meeting. Their role is to make Quaker web and social media presence more up to date, interesting and relevant. The coordinator both does the communications work and works with and trains Friends in how to do this.
The Area Meeting were finding it hard to fill some roles to allow the meeting to carry out its working. This was putting increasing pressure on those who were involved. In order to reduce the burden on Friends and to allow meetings to flourish, the area meeting decided to employ an Area Meeting administrator. The initial recruitment process, advertised in The Friend and locally, produced not a single application and so it was advertised through Charityjobs on a remote working basis, which resulted in 12 responses, 4 shortlisted and one person agreed in post via Zoom interviews.
Both posts are funded through one of the Legacies that AM holds, and the area meetings are feeling positive about these appointments and the time and energy it frees up for Friends to focus on other aspects of their spiritual community, worship and witness.