Community Network Engagement Coordinator

**Background**

The Community Network Engagement Coordinator is a new position at CanAssist. This individual will join the _Provincial_ _Employment Strategy for Youth with Disabilities _project team.

The _Provincial_ _Employment Strategy for Youth with Disabilities_ is a major CanAssist project. CanAssist is leading this work in collaboration with a Provincial Network of Stakeholders. The purpose of the Strategy is to strengthen BC’s youth employment support landscape by filling gaps, addressing barriers, and highlighting best practices. The project aims to address the patchwork of youth employment support and improve employment outcomes for youth with disabilities. Final deliverables will include:

- The Strategy, with supporting tools and resources
- Environmental Scan Report detailing the current landscape of employment support in BC
- A Youth-Specific Life and Career Development Model

We are two years into this four-year project. Over the past two years, we have focused on the Environmental Scan phase of work. We collected, reviewed, and analyzed new and existing information on the province’s employment support landscape to better understand the gaps, barriers, and best practices in serving youth with disabilities. Now we are wrapping up the last of our data analysis and gearing up to move into the Community Network Engagement phase of work. This phase involves engaging our provincial community in user-testing of tools and materials, as well as time-limited working groups, and external review groups. The focus of this engagement is to collect input at key stages in the development of specific resources and tools. Here is a brief description of the three engagement strategies:

- **User-testing** - group of Community Network members to test the tools/materials that we develop (e.g., the Best Practice Checklist) and complete an evaluation to share feedback.
- **Working groups** - group of Community Network members to collaborate on a mini-project (e.g., informing the development of theYouth-Specific Life and Career Development Model).
- **External review** - project tools/materials (e.g., Guiding Principles Checklist) and feedback rubrics shared with Community Network with open invitation to review and submit feedback.

Our Community Network includes contacts from the following groups:

- Youth with disabilities
- Caregivers of youth with disabilities
- Service providers serving youth with disabilities
- Employers
- Teachers/educators

**Position Summary**

The Community Network Engagement Coordinator will initiate and coordinate all Community Network Engagement efforts (user-testing, working groups, external reviews) to advance the _Provincial Employment Strategy for Youth with Disabilities_ initiative. This position requires a high level of organization, interpersonal and communication skills, and strong technical knowledge of community engagement strategies. There will also be a lot of collaboration with the team, so teamwork skills are essential.

**Responsibilities**
- Coordination of Community Network Engagement_

With support and direction from the Project Lead, the Community Network Engagement Coordinator will coordinate Community Network Engagement efforts. Specific duties include:

- Creating and monitoring a Community Network Engagement strategy.
- Creating and implementing a plan for the administration of seed funding to specific user-testing, working groups, and external review groups.
- Working with the Communications Coordinator to recruit Community Network members for participation in user-testing, working groups, and external review groups.
- Working with the Research Coordinator to schedule and facilitate meetings for user-testing, working groups, and external review groups.
- Working with the Research Coordinator to engage Community Network members in specific projects, including user-testing, working groups, external reviews to inform the development of key project deliverables.
- Working with the Research Coordinator to consolidate user-testing, working group, and external review input/feedback on project materials - and supporting the project team to interpret feedback and build it into materials.
- Other duties as assigned.
- Outreach and Engagement_

With support and direction from the Project Lead, the Community Network Engagement Coordinator will conduct outreach and engagement with the Community Network. Specific duties include:

- Conducting outreach to community groups and organizations across the province to build a provincial audience for the project and attract and recruit new Community Network members and organizations.
- Attending community events (in-person and online) to promote the project and build the Community Network with new interested members and organizations.
- Working with the Communications Coordinator to continue growing our Community Network of interested individuals and organizations through strategic communications.
- Working with the Communications