Join us as Impact Producer: incite curiosity, creativity & courage

Impact Producer / ˈimˌpakt pro·duc·er / Someone who puts together a talented crew, turns ideas into impact, and is responsible for all aspects of a creative production.

Impact Producers hold the space to both envision and prototype the future state of the immigrant & refugee experience in Canada – starting with older newcomers and newcomers living with disabilities. You will curate a team of community members and staff from Immigrant Services of Options Community Services (OCS) Society, to guide them between the world as it is now and the world as it could be.

This position is created in partnership with OCS. With a vision of inspiring hope and belonging for all, OCS Society has been providing services in Surrey, North Delta and Langley for over 40 years. OCS provides newcomers with a diverse array of support services including information, knowledge and skills necessary to settle and integrate into their new communities.

Over the next 2 ½ years, you and your team will move from doing original ethnographic research to prototyping new supports to spreading & embedding next practices. Don’t worry, you won’t be alone. You’ll be joining a cohort of social services across Canada dedicated to disrupting the status quo, and guided by InWithForward – Canada’s leading social design shop.

It’s time to shift our social safety nets into trampolines, and enable people to bounce up and forwards. For that to happen, we need to do more than improve our present-day services. We need to re-imagine what services and policies are for.

That’s why Options Community Services and InWithForward have come together, with support from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), to set-up a Research & Development function that makes & tests next practice. Our aim is to build permanent infrastructure for co-developing what the future looks and feels like. We think it’s time to move beyond pilots and projects to sustained experimental culture & practice.

Over the next 2.5 years, you’ll be part of a cross-Canada collective of other organizations with the same ambitions. We call this collective Grounded Space. Grounded Space uses a values-led design methodology, which combines philosophy, anthropology, social psychology, service design, and organizational change frameworks to bring to life a new kind of social contract.

Underpinning Grounded Space are 5 principles. Can you commit to these?  Join us!

• Focusing on flourishing lives, not just better services.
• Letting thick data drive insights, and insights drive solutions.
• Deeply scaling values and practices.
• Sharing power and learning.
• Holding space for failure, letting go, and celebration.

1. Relentlessly hold the space for inquiry and experimentation, balancing the tension between achieving best and going after next practice. This requires appreciating current contexts all the while challenging us to move beyond present day thinking.
2. Coordinate the experience of the team, choreographing day-to-day operations, logistics, and communications. Keep things moving & energy up by establishing team routines & celebrations, and by getting into a rhythm of learning by doing.
3. Strongly promote a user-led perspective that roots new ideas in the experiences, values, and aspirations of older newcomers and newcomers living with disabilities.
4. Support team members to dive deep into research and design by creating an environment rich in encouragement, hosting frank conversations, and offering direction & supervision.
5. Invite key stakeholders inside and outside of the organization to the table at the right times – embracing different perspectives and voices.
6. Predict tension points and address barriers between organizations and stakeholder groups. You’ll keep everyone up-to-date, and open to shifts in strategy.
7. Map and understand the broader organizational & community landscape – and along the way, build relationships to allow new things to sprout and grow.
8. Make room for thoughtful reflection & developmental evaluation, surfacing and quickly acting on emerging lessons.
9. Produce compelling storytelling materials to bring people along for the journey. Translate findings to stakeholder groups, the settlement sector and the broader community in a range of formats – blogs, photo stories, podcasts, interactive events, webinars.
10. Model lifelong learning, insatiable curiosity, and lateral thinking – that quirky capacity to connect dots, find fresh reference points, and go outside of your comfort zone.

Interdisciplinary thinker & doer. Yes, you have a university degree in social sciences, humanities, and/or design – but more importantly, you don’t stick within disciplinary boxes. Along the way, you’ve gained experience doing qualitative research – it’s a bonus if you’ve done ethnographic research or user-centred design!

Creative maker. You’re not content keeping ideas in the abstract, and have a track record of making concepts tangible – through writing or drawing, acting or role playing, creating websites or campaigns, setting-up exhibitions or spaces, etc.

Motivational coach & leader. You love to bring people out of their shells and raise their game, and have experience building creative teams where the sum is greater than the parts.

Powerful communicator. You’ve got stellar storytelling skills, and demonstrated ability to craft content that engages, educates and inspires different audiences – from funders to community members.

Howdy partner. You’ve got clear examples of working in partnership with community leaders, groups, and organizations with distinct perspectives and approaches.

Dynamic facilitator and hospitable host. You have experience setting-up environments where people feel safe to contribute, and are transported out of the mundanities of the day-to-day and into an imaginative head space.

Tech savvy & organized. You have experience and comfort in juggling multiple priorities and working to deadlines. You see technology as a helpful tool for organizing work, use social media, and can work between cloud software like google docs, slack, dropbox, and zoom.

• Passionate about what matters. You are deeply passionate about wanting to see change with and for folks on the margins, and have an understanding of the immigrant and refugee experience in Canada. You get that innovation is just a means to an end, not the end in and of itself.
• A respectful pioneer. You’re in your groove when you’re making big and ambitious stuff happen, but you know how to curate people’s journey from the known into the unknown.
• Rah-rah-raw. You are a natural cheerleader, adept at motivating people to try something different, to jump in head first without having the answers.
• Emotional intelligence to the max. You have experience navigating complex interpersonal situations, and enabling people to move beyond their fears, skepticism, cynicism, and worries. After all, engaging in change work can feel like a roller coaster ride!
• Barrier buster. You’re a “yes we can” kinda person. Where others see the world through feasibility glasses, you see the world through possibility glasses, focused on finding the workarounds, exceptions, and practical ways through.
• Adaptable. You don’t need a full plan to act. You appreciate the flexibility of learning as you go, and welcome changing course & approach as needed.
• Ready for more. You’re at a point in your life where you want to invest a bit more, to get a bit more. Rather than just a job, you’re looking for deeper learning. You’re ready to treat this experience as a Masters Program, with outside-of-hours reading and reflecting. You get that change doesn’t always happen between 9-to-5.

This role is part of Options Community Services, with ongoing support from InWithForward.

Start Date: September 4th 2018

Rate of Pay: $32.56/hour

Reports To: Senior manager, Immigrant Services

Hours: Full-time, 35 hours/week; 31-month contract

Flexibility: Your work schedule will be determined around the rhythm of the work. The role does require some evening/weekend work, and travel within Surrey & Vancouver.

Location: Social Innovation Centre (13969 100 Avenue, Surrey)

Other Requirements: You’ll be responsible for carrying/caring for a laptop and cell phone. A police reference check (including vulnerable sector screening) is required.

Fabulous! Answer the prompts below by August 24th at 5pm PDT. Please send your application to [email protected] with the subject line ‘Impact Producer – Hiring Committee.’ It’s super helpful if you can combine your files and send clear links!

1. Why you, why now? Show us how your values manifest in your work. Make us a short video or audio recording or presentation or pinterest board (or any other format!) that captures materials & images from past work and the values it reflects.
2. Tell us a true story of what transformative leadership looks and feels like to you. Describe a particular moment in which you either exercised transformative leadership OR failed to, and what you learned.
3. Find an example of something you consider to be next practice. Can be in any industry or field. Send us a link or a picture and write us a couple of sentences about why.
4. Attach your resume and highlight your relationship to the human services space. Please include any relevant social media handles and list the cloud software you are familiar with (e.g google docs, dropbox, slack).

We look forward to your application!

For this role, you’ll be employed by Options Community Services. Please  also download the posting for this role by OCS, which includes information additional to this page: