Engagement Associate

Job description

**Come and join our team**

Engagement Associate

Full-time role, with 1-2 days per week in our London office

£32,000-35,000 FTE depending on experience

**We are looking to recruit a dynamic and flexible individual with experience working in communications or engagement, and an understanding of what it takes to deliver high-quality research and evaluation projects.**

**About us**

**The Centre for Education and Youth (CfEY) is a ‘think and action-tank’. Our vision is of a society that ensures all children and young people receive the support they need to have a great childhood and make a fulfilling transition to adulthood.**

CfEY works with a wide range of organisations and people who share this vision, helping them make wise, bold decisions about how best to support young people. We are committed to social justice and are acutely aware of the interaction between power imbalances and inequality. We work with a wide range of clients across corporate, government and third sectors as learning, investigation, action, and communication partners. In doing so, we shape debate, inform policy and change practices, helping to create systems where all young people, but especially those most at risk of poor outcomes and marginalisation, thrive.

Our approach is unique because
- **We occupy the space between education and youth.** We share learning across the divide and advocate for the change that cross-sector collaboration can bring. We bridge policy, practice, and academia, and work with a diverse network of organisations and people, including MATs, schools, colleges, universities, government, businesses, youth organisations, and charities.
- We are **‘constructively critical’. **We avoid unhelpful cynicism, focus on how things could be better, and are analytical and intellectually rigorous. We always seek pragmatic ways of helping people take action grounded in evidence and experience. We are optimistic about the future and believe in the power of brilliant practitioners to realise the potential of all young people.
- We **are grounded**, using our front-line experiences as former teachers, teaching assistants and youth workers and our ongoing positive relationships with diverse young people and practitioners to grapple with complexity and understand what’s happening.
- We do not rely on a set catalogue of solutions. Different approaches and strategies are appropriate in different situations and settings. It is our job to have the **emotional and intellectual competence **to identify what will work where.
- We are **a social enterprise**. Everything we do is guided by our view of society’s responsibility, as well as being committed to delivering high-quality projects for our clients. We have no political or party allegiances. Income generation and social impact are mutually reinforcing for us.

**About the job**

**The Engagement Associate role is exciting, fast-paced and varied, with a dual purpose. On the one hand, you’ll help to refine CfEY’s engagement strategy and boost our profile, reach and impact. On the other, you’ll plan and conduct high-quality research and evaluation projects.**

Sitting within CfEY’s engagement strand and working closely with the Head of Engagement, you’ll help to ensure our work reaches people from across the education and youth sectors, including practitioners, policymakers, and the press. The strand is responsible for:

- Managing the promotion of CfEY’s work in national, local and sector press.
- Overseeing and supporting the creation of a steady stream of content for the CfEY website and social media channels, including blogs, podcasts, and videos.
- Leading the planning and delivery of online and in-person events.
- Coordinating and contributing to the CfEY team’s public speaking appearances.

You will also work closely with the rest of our team, seeking out and delivering research, policy, organisational development and communications projects for our clients. You will have a good level of autonomy over your work and will be in regular contact with senior leaders within client organisations. As a small and agile team, you may be asked to occasionally undertake tasks outside your role description to support the wider work of CFEY.

You can be located anywhere in the United Kingdom. Our office is in Hackney, London, and the team gathers there every other Monday. Everyone works from the office for at least one other day every fortnight. We offer an employer contribution pension (following a three-month probation period) and 33 days’ holiday per year (including bank holidays).

**Role Description**

**Design and deliver research and evaluation projects**:

- Plan and conduct high-quality, ethical research and evaluation through investigative projects, impact measurement, and action-focused work on the ground with practitioners and young people.
- Gather, analyse and write up qualitative and quantitative data.
- Support the team to ex