Freelance North East London Community Climate Action Manager

Green Schools Project is looking for a freelance Community Climate Action Manager in North-East London between the end of April and July 2025 to support youth-led climate action in local school communities. The schools involved will mostly be in Newham and Hackney.

This is an exciting opportunity to shape a new role in a small but ambitious social enterprise that is helping schools and young people to tackle the climate and nature crisis. In the past four years we have grown from a one-person organisation to a team of six through successful fundraising and the growth of our unique and innovative Zero Carbon Schools programme.

We created the Community Climate Action Manager role to align with the ‘Act’ and ‘Inspire’ stages of Zero Carbon Schools. In these stages, pupils design and lead projects to reduce their schools’ carbon footprints and then involve their school communities through awareness-raising days, events, and campaigns. The Community Climate Action Manager role will provide capacity and expertise to ensure that these activities translate into wider climate action, inspired by the voices and ideas of school pupils.

You’ll be working with closely with our Managing Director, Programme Delivery Officer, and Impact Manager, all based in London and the schools we work with locally to support their pupils to inspire community climate action.

The role would suit someone with experience of community engagement and events, working with schools, facilitation of workshops with young people or adults, environmental education, climate action, or a mix of any of these.

We believe that tackling the climate and nature crisis is the most urgent issue facing society and that schools need to educate young people about the situation they face and involve them in addressing it. Young people bear no responsibility for causing the climate crisis, yet they will have to live through this issue which will define their future. We believe that, given the opportunity, they have the energy, enthusiasm, and determination to change attitudes and behaviour on a local and global scale.

Our values that we do our best to embody at all times are to be enthusiastic, innovative, environmentally responsible, ethical, collaborative, and fun.

We exist to help young people learn about and get actively involved with tackling the climate and nature crisis. We support schools to provide opportunities for their pupils to learn about the individual actions and systemic responses required.

We are keen to attract applicants from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences but particularly interested to hear from applicants where the environmental education sector is currently underrepresented (ethnicity, disability, LGBT+, living in areas of low social mobility). 

What you’ll do:

• Work with 10 schools in Newham, Hackney (and maybe one or two neighbouring boroughs) running our Zero Carbon Schools programme to help them involve parents and the local community in climate action.
• Work with teachers to link pupils’ school carbon reduction projects to actions that parents and the wider community can take, helping to make schools a community hub for local climate action.
• Help to arrange events or add to existing events with these schools to inform and involve the local community.
• Enable schools to showcase Zero Carbon Schools to help recruit new schools to the programme next year.
• Support our Impact Manager to report on the impact of this work.

We need you to have:

• The ability to engage communities and organise community events.
• The ability to hit the ground running, coming up with your own ideas and plans for this role.
• A strong grounding in the local community in North-East London.
• Strong relationship building skills with the ability to enthuse both adults and children and young people.
• Strong organisational skills and an ability to keep records and track outcomes of interactions with schools.

It would be useful if you have:

• Experience of working with children and young people (e.g. as a teacher, delivering workshops or assemblies, working in youth and community settings).
• A passion for environmental issues and a commitment to help tackle the climate and nature crises.
• Experience of climate action campaigns.

What you’ll get from us:

• An opportunity to work with an award-winning social enterprise that is working to transform the way schools respond to the climate and nature crisis.
• A supportive and encouraging environment in which to grow your skills and knowledge, as well as shape a new and exciting role.
• £195 per day for 30 working days in total between the end of April and July, between 2-3 days per week, with a possibility of repeat employment depending on successful fundraising.

Location: Newham and Hackney

Timeline:

Deadline for applications: 21st April

Interview - task with questions: 24th/25th April

Start date: week commencing 28th April

The role is on a freelance basis so the successful candidate would need to invoice us for work carried out.

If you have any questions or if you need any adjustments made to the application process before you make an application, please get in touch with Henry Greenwood - [email protected]