We’re looking for a warm and energetic manager to lead our team of capable horticulturalists, working across a number of exciting urban farms and gardens with our partner organisations, providing work experience for young people in horticulture!
In 2021, STREAT, CERES, Collingwood Children’s Farm, Cultivating Community, and Melbourne Farmers Markets set up the Green Job Pathways project. This project provides training and employment pathways into horticulture for marginalised young people, building upon STREAT’s highly effective hospitality training program. The program provides wrap-around support for young people from our team of allied health professionals, as well as invaluable work experience in real work teams. Find out more about the program here: https://www.streat.com.au/youth-programs
We currently have horticulture staff members (Green Team Crew Members) located at CERES, Collingwood Children’s Farm, Melbourne Farmers Markets and STREAT, doing work that provides real, practical work experience for young people.
The role is varied and dynamic, including (but not limited to) the below responsibilities:
Lead the team of horticulturalists
The team of Green Team Crew Members are established, with strong relationships across the team and with partner sites. The team is familiar with the week to week work required of them.
Rostering
The roster for the staff members is relatively settled, but may require adjustments as the pilot project continues. Further, there are weekly activities related to the roster, including;
- Taking part in work experience shifts alongside your team with young people as part of the regular roster
- Ad hoc changes, sometimes on the day (e.g. with illness, particularly prevalent with COVID)
- Need to arrange back up plans and communicate to the partner site contacts
- Updating and communicating the roster to staff and partner sites each Thursday
- The roster of shifts for young people in the program is finalized each Thursday. It is then your responsibility to communicate when young people will be onsite to the Green Team Crew Members and the partner site contacts.
1. General management
You will also be responsible for the general management of the team, including managing leave, communication of any updates, professional development, performance management, continuous improvement of the work and project etc.
You will also likely be required to step in to cover a shift with a young person on site, in the case that more than two members of the team are unable to be at work. It’s critical that we don’t cancel shifts with our young people, as part of our duty of care we must always have two staff members present in a shift with a young person.
2. Build and maintain relationships with our partner sites: A key part of the project is to work closely with our partners. We rely on their space to be able to provide work experience to young people in our programs, and therefore need to make sure we’re working in lock step together. Any changes to rosters, or updates to ways of working, as well as regular communication on how we can improve the relationship, are key elements of the success of the project.
3. Maintain the budget and expenditure for the team: The team has regular expenses (such as seeds and seedlings, gloves, sunscreen, potting mix etc.), as well as ad hoc expenses that arise as needed. You’ll be supported by the Finance team at STREAT to manage the budget for the team.
4. Work with the Green team and the Innovation team to progress projects with Horticulture elements: We have a number of projects currently underway with the Green team:
5. Internally to STREAT: The team has engaged in an innovation process to come up with ideas to raise revenue for the project. Ideas include: workshops, garden maintenance, garden design.
- 6. Collaborative with other organisations: The team has provided both advice and direct, practical support to innovative design projects that are currently underway.
5. Other duties as required: As a continually evolving program, you will have other duties and responsibilities relating to the team, and to the horticulture program. This also means there are opportunities for you to be involved more broadly in aspects of the work that we’re doing at STREAT and Moving Feast.
What you’ll bring to the role
A warm, open-minded, organised person, we’re keen to find someone who will fit in easily with a vibrant and kind team at STREAT! We’re looking for the below skills for the role:
- A proven ability to build positive, productive and constructive relationships as both a manager, peer and partner with external organisations.
- Highly professional, with the ability to maintain strong professional boundaries.
- The ability to stay organised with multiple priorities and relationships, and to be proactive in finding solutions.
- The ability to work independently, and to set your own priorities for the team and project.
- Experience in successfully managing a diverse team (ideally a team that work remotely).
- The drive for continuous improvement, looking to make changes and improvements where possible in all aspects of the role.
- Demonstrated knowledge of urban agriculture practices, hardy plant care and indigenous plants.
- Demonstrated ability in the design and installation of urban farms in a range of spaces serving a range of communities.
- Demonstrated ability with landscape maintenance equipment.
- Demonstrated abilities with water management, troubleshooting and repair of irrigation systems, and basic landscape equipment repair.
- Experience with permaculture design, regenerative farming techniques and philosophy, intercropping/alley cropping, companion planting, no till agriculture, and other progressive farming practices.
- Experience and ability to speak about local food issues and urban agriculture.
- Commitment to STREAT’s mission and core values, particularly in supporting trainees and working with a diverse range of people.
- Internet literacy and proficiency with Word and Excel to file and organize electronic and paper documents.
- Excellent ethical standards and good personal boundaries.
Benefits: STREAT offers salary packaging to our employees
