Do you want to join a team that is using activist education to help challenge the interlocking systems of oppression that undermine social justice and ecological integrity? Do you want to make a contribution to a team that is bringing a strategic approach to that, and is working towards powerful and transformative changes? How about joining the Ulex team?
CURRENT OPPORTUNITIES
We are currently looking for a grant projects coordinator to join our core team.
Click here to download the role description.
The deadline for applications is Sunday 2nd March, end of the day. The ideal start date is the beginning of May (there’s some flexibility around this).
If you are interested in hearing about any further opportunities, sign up for our newsletter as we also send info through there! Link
WHY JOIN US?
OUR PURPOSE
Through activist training and education we support social movements in Europe to contest the future – for social justice and ecological integrity.
We see the problems we face as interconnected. Systemic problems require systemic solutions and connected approaches. Social movements, activists and their organisations need increased connections: across borders, across issues, across constituencies. Creating and strengthening such connections enhances both impact and resilience. Sharing experience and learning from each other’s struggles increases those connections and enhances movement responsiveness and vitality. That is why Ulex brings people together from across Europe from diverse groups and movements to learn together and build solidarity.
Over the last 10 years we have trained thousands of activists from over 20 countries, during tens of thousands of hours of residential training. We’ve innovated, piloted and networked. We supported diverse organisations and collaborated with numerous international organisations and facilitators. We have done this mostly through residential training in our centres at the foothills of the Catalan Pyrenees. Last year we expanded to Central and Eastern Europe, offering a tailored programme specific to the region. For the last 5 years we have also been researching and generating training resources to increase access to the experience and knowledge we have developed in collaboration with talented activists and trainers. The website or this old Impact Report will give you a fuller picture.
CULTURE AND VALUES
We are a diverse bunch in many ways. Here is a list of some of the things we value. We fall short of them sometimes too.
Politics: we come to our work with the urge to challenge the interlocking systems of oppression that undermine social justice and ecological integrity. We’re strategic about that and ambitious to have a powerful and transformative impact
Self-management: everyone has personal autonomy and responsibility to do their best work to achieve their role’s purpose. But we are aware of other roles and work collaboratively to ensure all our work aligns together
Interconnectedness: we navigate with curiosity the tensions between autonomy and cooperation. We believe that our wellbeing and resilience as individuals are tied to those of the group, as well as the earth
Synergy and innovation: we reuse and recycle ideas and practices where appropriate and relevant. We don’t want to reinvent the wheel. But bring high levels of creativity and innovation to build on what is there
Effectiveness: we have high standards for our work, which involves the ability to learn and grow from mistakes
Passion: we get energy from each other’s commitment to social change and our role within it
Compassion and commitment to transformation: we aim to support each other and generate spaces for people to know themselves more deeply and bring out their full potential
Self-awareness: we just do not envision working without it, we expect to be able to reflect with each other about our tendencies and behaviours
Transformative friendship: we place a lot of value in the quality of our relationships
Going for the good of the whole: we apply systems thinking and understand that the good of the whole also involves “me”.
OUR TEAM
We hold each other with a lot of respect, love and appreciation. We are a very hard-working team, made up of some very committed people – and we strive with integrity to support each other to stay resourced and resilient.
A few snapshots:
– You will be able to geek out about productivity systems or the best task tracking system, if that’s your thing – but you’ll also find some of us who like to keep things organic and flowing;
– We take processes for both support and accountability seriously (individually and as a whole team) to help each other grow;
– You can expect occasional good jokes and sarcasm in our internal communications;
– Our systems are full of details and spreadsheets;
– We have a horizontal support structure, where each of us is offering a reflection space to one of the mates while receiving the work related mentoring type support through the peer-to-peer circle;
– We can embody quite a lot of playfulness (e.g. wearing unicorn costumes or doing silly dance videos together);
– Most of us meditate or use other awareness building practices (some more regularly than others!);
– When workload allows throughout the year, we engage in collective political study to share perspectives and explore the deeper reasons, ideas and motivations for why we do the work we do;
– The ‘integral activist’ approach that we hold for our trainings, also applies to how we think about our work together;
Read some brief descriptions of team members here.
OUR GOVERNANCE
We are implementing Sociocracy as our governance structure. This means we value empowerment and a dynamic balance between autonomy and cooperation. We’re not typically hierarchical, but neither are we simply horizontal! Sociocracy offers an agile structure that distributes decision making and aims to be empowering, efficient, and ensure we take care of each other. You will become part of the Grant Admin Circle, where your work will be located. In this circle (like anybody else in the circles they belong to), as a full member, you will have equal power to consent or object to any decisions that belong to the domain of that circle. You will have both autonomy and responsibility and be expected to consider the good of the whole.
WHERE YOU WILL WORK FROM
Most of the team lives in Pallars Jussà (a region in Catalunya, north of Lleida), where the Ulex Centre and Ecodharma (a sister/parent project) are located: Mun, Ella, Róż, Ilaj, Carol, Gee, Neus, Cori.
Others live at 100-200 km radius of this area: Katusha, Hilal, Lou, Abi
And others still are further remote, elsewhere in Europe or Africa: Onyango, Alex, Isabel, Lluna, Sinan.
We value the opportunities for relationship building that are offered when living close to Pallars (Catalunya), so our preference would be for new team members to eventually be residential in the area. It is not a requirement though, as we know it might not be possible for a variety of reasons! Some of us do not live in Pallars – and we are in ongoing learning about maintaining a sense of team connection through remote working.
Regardless of where you live, we need you to be available to attend our 2 week in person meetings here in Pallars at the beginning of every January.
WORK SCHEDULE
We agree to a minimum of 32 working hours a week. Typically the working week at Ulex is Tuesday to Friday. A “typical” day can be thought of as 9 to 6pm, with 1h for lunch (but we’re not all typical). We operate on trust, and nobody is watching or counting anybody’s hours. We essentially work whenever is best for us, bearing in mind that coordinated working hours are useful for communicating with each other and having enough overlap for effective cooperation.
So, we take the breaks we need when we need them. We can choose to work at the weekends to free up some of our time during the week or just because we want to. As long as we’re communicating clearly with the rest of the team if the change in our working pattern is going to affect them, all is well. If we end up with spare time, we’re trusted to express this and take on extra tasks/responsibilities to best distribute the team workload. Equally, if we’re overstretched and our workload can’t be achieved within the time we have for it, we’re trusted to bring this up so that we can find a collective solution.
For the trust based approach to work, we each need to be conscientious about our capacity and how we make good use of our time.
If you need other working agreements for hours (for example, accumulating “toil” formally and then taking it), you can bring this up in a meeting and it can be agreed for you by the team.
TIME OFF
Six weeks per year. Generally any time should be fine as long as necessary tasks can get done while the person is away (so this involves coordinating with the rest of people you closely work with).
There are some times in the year that are not ideal for (long) periods of time off, namely funding application writing time from December till February.
We don’t take account of bank holidays or other public holidays. They are not additional to the 6 weeks per year.
FINANCIAL SUPPORT
We operate a ‘solidarity economy’. So, we don’t offer a wage or salary in the traditional sense. Instead, our approach is to consider the financial support that each of us needs to live a simple good life and feel sufficiently resourced to contribute our time and energy to the project. We will have a conversation and take into account your healthcare needs, caring responsibilities, debt, taxes and so on. However, as a social movement organisation, our funds are limited, so what we can offer will be limited too.
As a guideline, this is what is currently happening for current team members per year:
– Residentially in Ecodharma: between 12,000€ and 17,500€ per year (as a mix of financial support, and in-kind support)
– Remotely: between 15,000€ and 24,000€ net per year.
As stated, this is what is happening at the moment. We do negotiate and review financial support on an ongoing basis, and on a needs basis. We think about our needs carefully, and we think of them with the spirit of generosity in mind. This comes together with a strong determination to take care of ourselves in the long-term even if we might be able to “live with less” in the short-term.
You can be contracted under the Spanish state and social security system. If this doesn’t work for you, you will need to be responsible for invoicing us as self-employed.
We cannot at the moment support the process of getting a working visa to live and work in Spain. We know this creates barriers and we hope to able to offer this option soon again, we just do not have the resources to be able to offer it at this point in time. We are very happy to receive applications from people working remotely from outside of Europe, and discuss the possibilities of obtaining a visa in the future (looking at team capacity, that’s not likely to happen for at least a year).
DIVERSITY
We are a diverse group with regards to gender, class, age and nationality. At the moment the core team is mostly white with 3 BPOC people. Cultural backgrounds include Catalan, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Kenyan, Latvian, Portuguese, British. We would like to continue to grow the diversity of our team and we strongly encourage people to apply with different experiences, backgrounds and identities.
We believe our differences and uniqueness make us stronger and we have a culture where difference and authenticity is valued. We want people from diverse backgrounds to feel represented and welcomed at Ulex. We are committed to working with challenges that come up when differences of backgrounds, experiences and views are present. We are also committed to unpacking and transforming patterns of systemic oppression that we will at times inevitably reproduce when working together.
Having a diverse team will also help us build a broad-based Social Movement Organisation which can support and welcome a wide range of people and groups across society.
HOW TO APPLY
Click here to download the role description.
Send the following to Neus at neus@ulexproject.org
1) CV (2 page maximum)
2) a cover letter (maximum 1600 words) telling us:
- i) I’m keen to join the Ulex team because…
- ii) I’ll be able to stay motivated and committed to the coordination and administration role because…
iii) You’ll be delighted by my skills and qualities because they’ll bring to the team….
- iv) Conditions that support me to bring my best self to a team are…
- v) a) If applying to live in or near Pallars: What interests and inspires me about living in/near Pallars is… The challenges that I foresee are…
Or
- v) b) If applying to take on the post remotely: My experience of working remotely as part of a team is… and given that experience, the challenges that I foresee are…
Please also let us know where you expect to be based whilst working remotely.
MORE INFORMATION
Do contact Neus at neus@ulexproject.org if you have any questions or need support with your application.
- The deadline for applications is Sunday 2nd March, end of the day.
- The ideal start date is beginning of May (there’s some flexibility around this).