CIS-A2K Communication Officer position
The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is seeking applications only from prospective candidates who identify themselves as women, for the position of Programme Officer (Communications, the position is also known as Communication Officer), to support its Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) Programme. The job application is open to women only because we feel that a woman communications person will contribute more towards bridging the gender gap in the Wikimedia movement by emphasising on gender-sensitive communication apart from contributing internally for bringing a gender balance in the team.
Context of the CIS-A2K programme
As an affiliate of the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit behind Wikipedia and Wikipedia’s sister project, we design and implement different projects with an aim to create high quality content and cultivate new contributors to Wikimedia projects. The projects will be premised on themes and seek to create a multilingual repository of knowledge using Wikimedia projects as a knowledge platform. You are encouraged to deeply engage with the CIS-A2K work plan before making the application. You will work cohesively with the Wikimedia community and the Wikimedia India Chapter to meet specific goals of each language community in India. You will be a part of a small team of 5 to 10 doing high visibility and high impact work. Please learn more about CIS-A2K here.
Position summary
Characteristics of the Programme Officer
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High level of commitment: The Programme Officer should believe in the values of CIS and Wikimedia projects, exude enthusiasm for the mission and can powerfully embody and communicate the mission.
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Intellectual curiosity and flexibility: Must enjoy tackling difficult, ambiguous problems and able to incorporate new knowledge into how one approaches situations and generates solutions, loves learning from others while expanding intellectual horizons.
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Open and transparent: Have a high level of integrity and be comfortable working in a highly transparent fashion, open to input and feedback, a proactive and candid communicator who wants people to know what s/he is doing and isn't afraid to bring others in when things are off-track or when you need help and should able to handle criticism in a mature fashion.
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Community builder: It is essential that the Programme Officer sees herself/himself as a partner to and supporter of the Wikimedians who have and will continue to be the leaders in building the Wikimedia projects. The Programme Officer must be willing and able to work with a diverse array of people, many of whom come from non-traditional backgrounds and have a fervent commitment to Wikimedia movement’s community-led nature.
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Strong cultural competency: Able to navigate in a global movement and on a global team in addition to navigating the complexity of India.
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Partnership developer: Able to initiate, negotiate and operate partnerships that advance the Wikimedia mission in Indic languages and English (as relevant to India) with a wide range of institutions across the public, NGO, universities, philanthropic and private sector.
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Willing to travel: The Programme Officer must regularly travel within India to engage with Wikimedia communities and partner with institutions.
Responsibilities
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You will be responsible for the overall communications of Team that include storytelling in the form of interviews, blogs, opinion pieces in newspaper/other platforms, regular coverage in both Indian language and English media, and anything beyond.
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You will be exploring widely from conventional to new media to spread the stories of the hundreds and thousands of volunteers that make the Indian-language Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects such great knowledge repositories.
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Creating original stories of challenges and learning, and successes of Wikimedia community in general and the ones that we closely work with in particular.
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Function as an interface between A2K team and the community, and help the team better work collaboratively with the community.
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Sharing the work of the community and A2k team in a regular basis in the monthly newsletters and other places.
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Providing training on effective communications to the communities in a need basis, and supporting them to independently tell their own stories in their own languages.
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Announcement of programmatic activities in the form of announcements, blogs and reports, and microblogging (social media, etc.).
Required skills
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Graduate with a strong track record of success in high performance organisations, preferably in non-profits.
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Experience could be during studies or after, primarily in blogging, writing organisation reports, managing social media for organisations, interviewing and covering people’s stories in mainstream media.
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Prior experience of working in a collaborative community, preferably and open one like Wikipedia and in online.
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Good understanding of the basics of organisational programme design and management.
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Strong understanding of the Internet and the forces that underpin the success of Wikipedia. Active participation as a Wikimedia volunteer would be an asset, though not a prerequisite (must be prepared to demonstrate knowledge of how Wikipedia works in interviews).
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Experience working in a global, multicultural and diverse team environment will be preferred.
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Must be fluent in English and at least in one Indian language.
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A good understanding of the cultural and knowledge universe of the Indian language communities.
Location: The position is based out of the CIS’s Bangalore office.
Remuneration: Compensation structure will be determined by the level of expertise, experience and current remuneration.
To apply, please send your resume to Tito Dutta ([email protected]) by 4 June 2019. Please do not miss the +po2019 part in the email, that is an email filter for us)
Author
Tito Dutta
Tito is a Programme Officer associated with the Access to Knowledge team at the CIS, and his work focuses on supporting Indic Wikimedia Communities and community members to plan and conduct Wiki-events.
