Organiser jobs

We are excited to recruit a Community Organiser for our Bedford Parent Power project, funded by the Harpur Trust. The Brilliant Club will work in partnership with the Harpur Trust, local schools and university partners to engage with parents in Bedford. This role offers a meaningful, paid opportunity to empower parents and carers to address barriers their children face.

Bedford Parent Power utilises the community organising-based model first created by King’s College London and Citizens UK with South London Parent Power, which has now grown into a movement of 16 Parent Power chapters across the UK. Parent Power supports parents and carers to develop skills in community organising and advice and guidance on accessing higher education, empowering them to make change to support their children’s future and ensure that they have a fair chance in education and their future careers.    

Working with us, the Community Organiser will:  

• Receive community organising training from Citizens UK and develop transferable skills;
• Build campaigns to combat local educational barriers with parent/carer communities;
• Support the progression of young people by empowering their parent/carers to become higher education experts;
• Join a nationwide community of community organisers making a significant impact on university access.

About you

The role will best suit someone who:

Essential  

• Has knowledge of challenges faced in Bedford’s communities. 
• Has a demonstrable passion for furthering The Brilliant Club’s mission.
• Can adhere to information security policies included in the charity’s ISO 27001 manual (information security training provided).

Desirable  

• Has prior experience of community focused work. 
• Understands the current climate in the UK school system and some of the challenges young people and parent/carers might be facing.  
• Understands the barriers young people face to university access and some of the ways these might be overcome. 

What is the Worker-led Transition project?

The Worker-led Transition project is a collaboration between NEON and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) that aims to future-proof manufacturing jobs, accelerate climate action and push back against far-right politics in industrial communities.

The TUC estimates that the future of up to 800,000 jobs in the UK (in sectors like chemicals, automotive, steel, ceramics, their supply chains and more) depend on timely planning and investment in industry to meet the needs of a decarbonised economy. Our project supports workers in high-carbon manufacturing industries to plan for a sustainable future for their workplaces (e.g. making green steel or zero-emissions vehicles), builds alignment across the climate movement in support of a worker-led transition, and counters far-right politics in industrial communities by advancing a vision for a socially just climate transition that protects and creates well-paid, unionised jobs in the clean industries of the future. 

Purpose of the role

The purpose of this role is to support NEON’s work to build organising capacity in UK social movements, with a focus on NEON’s Worker-led Transition project. You will:

• Build support for a worker-led transition in the climate movement and industrial communities, with an emphasis on local and regional coalition and capacity-building in key industrial regions, as well as strengthening relationships with the trade union movement and industrial workers.
• Provide responsive support to movement organisations when they need it most, offering strategic and organising support and advice.

Key Responsibilities

1. Play a key role in the delivery of NEON’s movement building and organising work for the Worker-led Transition project, by strengthening relationships between the climate movement and trade union movements, and training and supporting local groups and community members to organise and campaign in support of a worker-led transition and a sustainable future for communities in key industrial regions:
   • This will involve visits to industrial sites and communities across England and Wales
2. Co-design and deliver events and trainings, where climate activists and trade union organisers and members can build relationships, strategise and plan joint action to deliver a worker-led transition
3. Collaborate with TUC staff to ensure coordinated and effective action in support of a worker-led transition
4. Work with colleagues in the Movement Building Hub to develop strategy, and join up our organising work across programmes
5. Play an active part in the whole NEON team and the Movement Building Hub Team, contributing to organisation-wide plans, including providing facilitation support for other NEON programmes as and when requested.

Who you are

Please note - this isn’t a tick box exercise and we don’t expect you to meet all of the criteria - it’s more to give both us and you an overall sense of the role, and how the skills and experience you have might map onto it. 

We’re looking for someone with a:

• Proven track record of using organising and movement building approaches to plan and deliver successful campaigns, with at least 3 years of experience. This might include: doing mapping, conducting outreach, organising mass meetings, integrating political education into campaign planning, or convening organisations to build alignment and develop shared strategy
• Ability to design and deliver a complex organising and movement building strategy in a fast moving environment, with sensitivity to movement politics
• Good communication and relationship-building skills, with the ability to communicate complex ideas clearly and work effectively with a range of movement organisations and individuals, including workers and those directly impacted by injustice and oppression
• Experience of delivering trainings and facilitating, including to those at the sharp end of injustice
• Excellent planning skills to ensure projects are designed delivered to a high standard
• Ability to work independently and flexibly in a dynamic organisation
• Experience of delivering trainings and facilitating, including to those at the sharp end of injustice
• Understanding of the climate movement or trade union movement
• Willingness to occasionally work unsociable hours (always repaid with TOIL)
• Proven understanding of anti-oppression work and commitment to tackling all institutional forms of oppression, bigotry and exclusion
• An affinity with NEON’s aims, objectives and organisational values of solidarity, generosity and respect.

About us:

NEON is a capacity and infrastructure building organisation that seeks to accelerate the transition to a new economy by building the power of social movements - because without strong social movements we lack the power we need to win. We deliver trainings, develop resources, facilitate collaboration and work in partnership with key movement allies, especially in the climate, housing and migration movements. Our focus is on strengthening the organising, communications and strategy skills of social movement organisations, as well as deepening movement alignment, as we believe these are key to building collective power. As part of our work, we are looking to change the starting point in social movements from “what do we agree on” to “what can we win together?”

We also aim to mirror the change we want to see in social movements in the way we run the organisation internally. To that end, we are committed to building a workplace centred on joy, care and justice, whilst maintaining healthy boundaries of what a workplace is. We do this because it is important to live our values and principles, and because strategically an organisation with a healthy culture and strong foundations ensures we are always one step ahead in the fight for a just and sustainable future.

To build a culture and community that lasts, we organise around three values:

● Solidarity - we’re here to change the system and that requires working together across issues and sectors that aren’t normally in the same room. This means placing anti-oppression at the heart of our work and building the power of people most often affected by injustice to change the leadership of our movements

● Generosity is about sharing our time, resources and learning with one another as we support each other’s work. It means being open and honest with one another, especially when we hit problems, and thinking creatively about how we positively build from there

● Respect is the bottom line for all relationships in NEON. It means being respectful of different backgrounds and life experiences and giving space for all voices to be heard. This often means listening more than we talk and being open to changing ourselves as a result of what we hear.

We know that people from certain backgrounds and identities are often excluded in progressive movements and we’re committed to doing what we can to correct this.

So:

• We particularly welcome applications from marginalised groups, especially people of colour and other ethnic minorities, people who identify as LGBTQIA, Disabled people and those who identify as working class or have done so in the past.
• We know the work goes way beyond "diversity", it's about making the space inclusive too. So we are continuously working on that at NEON. So far this includes tangible things like a flexible work policy so people have genuine flexibility around where and when they work and a 28 hour week as standard; a gender-neutral parenting/leave policy, an anti-oppression strategy which is held at senior level given how important it is to the organisation. It also includes the day-to-day work of creating psychological safety for everyone at NEON and celebrating the wisdom of black, indigenous, queer, Disabled and other cultures in the way we work and behave

There are no formal education requirements for this role. As long as you can show us you have the skills we don’t mind where you got them from! Also important to us is your potential to learn and grow in the role so even if you don’t have 100% of the skills listed we want to hear from you.

Dates:

Closing date: 10th May 2026, 11.59pm

Interview dates: 1st interviews (online) Tuesday 26th & Wednesday 27th May 2026, 2nd interviews (in person) Wednesday 3rd June 2026

Please visit our website for more details and to apply.