Community Developer
From AFSWiki
During its February 2010 meeting the AFS-USA Board of Directors approved funding for 10 part-time Community Development staff, working in the Volunteer Development Department. The primary responsibility of these 10 individuals will be to focus on building local AFS volunteer activity, including the development of new chapters, in 10 specific communities around the US. In February and March 2010, the Volunteer Development Managers worked with regional staff and with volunteer leadership, in order to identify potential areas of development. With significant input and feedback from regional staff and by the volunteer leadership in the teams being considered for the projects, proposals were written, which outlined the locations for the projects and what the expected outcomes would be in each area. The Executive Team reviewed the proposals that were submitted and made the decisions as to which 10 areas would be the focus of our Community Development efforts this year.
Here are the locations for the 10 Community Development projects in 2010:
Carolinas Team - Winston-Salem, Greensboro, and Forsythe County.
E-Z Pass Team - The Community Developer will be focused primarily on developing a stronger volunteer infrastructure to coordinate the sending function from recruitment, screening, and interviewing, all the way through departure and re-entry.
Georgia Team - Atlanta and surrounding suburban counties
Greater West Metro Team - Communities which are west and northwest of Minneapolis.
One World Team - Ft Wayne and Allen County, Indiana.
Greater Chicago Team - The Community Developer will be focused primarily on developing a stronger volunteer infrastructure to coordinate the sending function from recruitment, screening, and interviewing, all the way through departure and re-entry.
Kansas City Team - Johnson County area.
Silver & Gold Team - Reno, Grass Valley, Nevada City, and Elk Grove.
Steinbeck Coast Team - Santa Cruz and surrounding communities
Colorado Rockies Team - Denver & surrounding suburbs
The Community Developers are part-time staff, working no more than 19 hours per week. The individuals who have been hired reside in the geographic areas that have been selected for these community development projects. All 10 Community Developers attended training in Minneapolis, MN, from May 4-8. In addition, one volunteer from eight of the ten areas travelled to Minneapolis, for the final day of the training, in order to give the new Community Developer an opportunity to work with a current volunteer leader from their team to begin to develop a concrete work plan for the first months of this new project.
The Community Developers will work at all times in close collaboration with the current volunteer leadership in the selected teams and with the Volunteer Development Manager assigned to the team. Broadly speaking, the job of the Community Developer will be to assist the team assigned to them to ensure that all the volunteers in the assigned communities receive the support and assistance they need to create and maintain a strong autonomous team capable of implementing programs with quality. In addition, the Community Developer will also work with volunteers to identify potential growth areas where new volunteer teams can be established. The Community Developers will be able to assist teams with such activities as new volunteer recruitment, integration, and training, developing stronger school relations, ensuring better team communication, developing leadership etc. Their specific tasks will of course be dependent on the specific needs of the teams with whom they are working.
The Community Developers are not being hired to specifically recruit host families, to recruit students to go abroad, to support students or to do school presentations. We hope that they will have some positive impact on hosting and sending this year, of course, but we also want to be realistic and we know that real development takes time. By 2011, the expectation is that the new volunteers and chapters that have begun to be developed in these areas will be able to support some modest amount of additional sending and hosting activity.
