Organizer (Policy & Public Affairs)

Summary

ORGANIZATION DESCRIPTION

Founded in 1965, the Chinese-American Planning Council, Inc. (CPC) aims to promote the social and economic empowerment of Chinese American, immigrant, and low-income communities. Today, CPC is the nation's largest Asian American social services agency and offers more than 50 programs at over 35 sites throughout New York City, including early childhood education, school-age care, youth services, workforce development, community services, and senior services. CPC strives to be the premier social service and leadership development organization. In 2017, CPC launched Advancing Our CommUNITY, its organization-wide strategy to expand services to address persistent needs and emerging trends and to improve leadership skills among staff and community members. In 2022, our core programs and emergency services reached 200,000 people living in all five boroughs and all 51 city council districts. In the summer of 2022, CPC was recognized as the number one Chinese American organization in New York City to recommend to a Chinese immigrant looking for in-language and culturally competent resources according to a recent survey. This accomplishment is a testament to the incredible work and dedication of our staff. (For more information, please visit: https://www.cpc-nyc.org/)

PROGRAM SUMMARY

The Policy and Public Affairs team conducts policy analysis and works on advocacy campaigns focused on promoting legislative and budget policies that improve the social and economic empowerment of AAPI, immigrant, and low-income New Yorkers. The team also does civic engagement and community mobilization work, as well as government affairs and media relations.

JOB SUMMARY

Reporting to the Civic Engagement and Training Manager, the full-time Organizer will be a critical position in carrying out CPC’s strategic plan, focusing on engaging staff and community members in public policy and advocacy work and building their capacity and confidence to do so through training, resources, know your rights, and more. This will be a heavily community-facing role, and requires someone that is willing to meet people where they are (both physically and politically), and do the important but often slow work of political education and civic engagement (referring to individual and collective action on issues that impact communities).

Qualifications

Education and Experience:

• Relevant educational background; bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience preferred.
• Previous organizing experience preferred but not required
• Knowledge of issues that impact low-income, immigrant and AAPI communities; including housing, healthcare, immigration, employment and more.

Skills and Competencies:

• Language – Native Mandarin speaking candidates, able to write and translate policy content and/or facilitate presentations in-language, is a MUST.
• Commitment to Social, Racial, and Economic Justice – Understanding of policy issues and areas of need that impact Asian-American, immigrant and low-income communities in New York; commitment to building transformative policy change to combat systems of oppression.
• Community-Facing – Eager to spend the majority of work hours in the field with staff and community members, running trainings and workshops, having one to one conversations, running outreach like community events and door knocking. Should be energized by working with people. Willing to travel to all five boroughs and occasionally outside of the city.
• Communication – Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, with the ability to communicate effectively with diverse audiences. Ability to tailor content and curriculum to the needs of different audiences, engaging presentation and conversation skills.
• Accessible Political Education – A strong commitment to CPC’s values and priorities, and making the teaching of them accessible to a variety of audiences depending on language, age, immigration status, income, disability and neurodivergence, and more.
• Strong organizational and time-management skills – The ability to multitask and prioritize tasks effectively, and communicate proactively about workload and capacity challenges. Able to effectively track activities and outcomes, and communicate those with the team in a timely manner.
• Action Oriented – Ability to act and react as necessary, even if limited information is available; a high degree of independence, flexibility, initiative, commitment and ability to work as part of a team.
• Effective Partnerships – Ability to work effectively with internal and external stakeholders; ability to develop effective partnerships; demonstrated ability to work effectively in a team.

Duties

• Community Member Engagement and Organizing
  • Organizing community members alongside the Civic Engagement and Training Manager and the Community Organizer, including identifying potential leaders, building relationships through one-on-one meetings, identifying leadership needs and developing, planning and facilitating trainings.
  • Facilitate community meetings, workshops, and events to address community needs and concerns, drive civic education, and engage community members in advocacy work.
  • Leading larger civic engagement efforts such as voter registration efforts, GOTV, candidate forums and identifying relevant large scale opportunities to outreach and engage community members and staff on advocacy.
  • Help recruit, train and mobilize community members to participate in various advocacy events, from State Advocacy Day to social media actions and rallies. Come up with creative ways to meet community members where they are and build their advocacy skills and confidence.
  • This may include working with community members in our Queens Community Center in Flushing, Queens.
• Staff and Elected Official Outreach and Engagement
  • Engage program staff to learn more about the Policy Team, why advocacy matters and how it relates to their programs/daily lives, and how to get more involved in training and advocacy events.
  • Develop and maintain relationships with program staff to keep open lines of communication about Policy Team issues and events.
  • Help support programs on their own advocacy and related events, for example hosting an elected official for a site visit.
  • Build deeper relationships with elected and government officials offices through connecting programs with elected offices, hosting mobile clinics or partnering on events alongside program staff.
  • Recruit staff to participate in advocacy events and support them through the actions through skills building and follow up.
  • Work with the Civic Engagement Manager and the Community Organizer to implement staff training and political education curriculum.
• Supporting Advocacy Leadership Development
  • In addition to broader organizing efforts, work closely with targeted efforts to build leadership among staff and community members.
    • This includes our Staff Advocacy Leaders Fellowship, which engages frontline staff in up to three years of training and hands on experience with advocacy.
    • This includes our Youth Advocates program, which engages high school and college-age young people to get involved with advocacy in their local communities.
• Admin and Team Strategy
  • Translating resources into Mandarin and interpreting for advocacy, Know Your Rights, and community organizing events.
  • Planning and implementing policy and advocacy events, including scheduling and preparing for legislative meetings, assisting with planning advocacy days, etc.
  • Representing CPC at policy and advocacy activities, including coalition meetings, legislative meetings, advocacy days, rallies, press events, public hearings, etc.
  • Strategic and organizational planning for building policy and advocacy at CPC.
  • Internal team administration and organization, including financial reporting, grant administration, communication with other divisions, participating in supervisors and all staff meetings, etc.