Position: Project Manager – Kent Gleaning Collective
Type: 0.6FTE, 1 year contract June 2023 – May 2024
Reports to: Chief Executive Produced in Kent
Salary: £28,000 (pro rata)
Location: Office/Home-based
Start date: 1 June 2023
Purpose of the Job
Produced in Kent (PINK) is seeking to appoint a project manager to oversee the Kent Gleaning Collective project – see Annex 1 for project brief. Where time allows, the candidate will also provide project admin support to food-sharing app FoodLoop.
Main duties and responsibilities
- In collaboration with the project consultant, partnership building with the farms in the Kent AONB area participating in the project.
- Liaising between the participating farms and the student gleaning group and coordinating all gleaning activities.
- Liaising with the campus catering outlets, charities, community initiatives and food banks registered on the app to ensure that all surplus is redistributed.
- Liaising with the student carrying out the research project on the gleaning project data collected through FoodLoop
- App admin – managing back end of the app.
- Content creation – writing stories about the project for the Produced in Kent and University of Kent websites, newsletters and social media channels.
- Reactive social media – commenting, sharing, liking etc.
- Event coordination - organizing the training days for the student gleaning groups and farm representatives, and any follow-up meetings.
The project manager will form part of a small and close-knit team and will as such assist with general duties as and when required.
The following outlines the criteria for this post. We always carry out shortlisting, interviewing and selection without regard to an applicant's sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital or civil partnership status, race, nationality, ethnic or national origins, religion or belief, age, pregnancy or maternity leave or trade union membership.
CRITERIA |
|
QUALIFICATIONS |
No specific qualifications but a clear commitment to further personal and professional development when required. |
EXPERIENCE |
Experience of working in a team on a project or activity to a deadline, interacting with other stakeholders. Event management experience including managing project budgets and reporting on progress against targets. Experience of working with the farming community would be helpful but not essential. |
SKILLS AND ABILITIES |
A Can-Do attitude and positive approach to challenges. Excellent communication skills. Good organizational and time management skills. Ability to work independently and to tight deadlines. Strong level of IT skills including the ability to use Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook). Commitment to diversity in all aspects of work. Ability to travel to the Produced in Kent office in Ashford. Clean driving license Ability to work in the UK |
BEHAVIOURS |
Accepting differences, being sensitive to someone’s needs and adjusting accordingly. Keen to work with a range of people and organisations to develop lasting partnerships to achieve common goals. Entrepreneurial attitude to seek out innovative solutions and adapt to change when needed. |
To apply for the position, please send your CV plus a cover letter explaining why you are the ideal candidate for the position to: info@producedinkent.co.uk latest by midnight on Friday 12 May 2023.
Who is Produced in Kent?
Produced in Kent, established in 2005, is the County’s representative body of the local independent food and drink sector, working on behalf of 280+ growers, producers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and hospitality businesses – ranging from SMEs to larger companies trading locally, nationally and internationally. The Kent food and drink industry adds an estimated 2.6bln to the local economy.
Its core activities centre around sector advocacy, online (website, electronic newsletters, social media) and offline member promotion and campaigning for local sustainable food and drink, networking facilitation and technical business support provided through its industry and strategic partnerships with corporates, local professional services providers, educational institutions and community organisations. Produced in Kent’s annual Taste of Kent Awards is the county’s flagship event around local food and drink, celebrating the finest products Kent has to offer as well as the businesses behind them.
Produced in Kent puts sustainability at the core of its activities and member support, championing sustainable food and drink and helping its businesses operate in an environmentally and socially sustainable way. Through its No Food Wasted forum, Produced in Kent brings together businesses, not-for-profits, charities and community initiatives with the aim to minimise surplus food and maximise access to good food for all in the county. It is currently trialling its B2B food exchange app (Food Loop) which will be used in the student gleaning project.
ANNEX 1
KENT GLEANING COLLECTIVE
a Produced in Kent/University of Kent project
Considerations
- In Kent as in the rest of the UK, surplus fresh produce is left in the field post-harvest or not harvested due to staff, quality or price constraints. Nationally, pre-farm gate food waste has been estimated to 1.6 million tonnes annually[1]
- The cost-of-living crisis increases the pressure on food banks and food redistribution organisations with many not including fresh produce in their offer. Food offered to those who need it is often just ambient and not always healthy
- Many students have expressed their concern about the increased cost of living, and both the University of Kent and Greenwich have opened their own food banks
- A B2B app called FoodLoop, connecting suppliers of fresh surplus food with takers of surplus food in Kent and Medway has been developed by Produced in Kent and is currently being trialled across the county. Several challenges prohibit the buy-in by producers and ‘takers’ of surplus: 1. many growers want to donate anonymously, 2. surplus often still needs to gleaned from the field but farmers are apprehensive about letting strangers onto their land 3. ‘takers’ of surplus often do not have the capacity to collect (no vehicle, staff)
- Currently in Kent, there are only two gleaning groups operational, in Deal area and Hythe area, often working together and in regular contact with 6 farms in East Kent. The gleaning groups ‘glean to order’: they let their local community networks know what type of produce will be gleaned that week, organisations put their ‘order’ in, and the volunteers glean what is needed. This is often only a fraction of what could be gleaned if gleaning capacity was increased. The gleaners use their own vehicles (and fuel) to redistribute. Both are in favour of more gleaning groups in the county and are happy to have additional volunteers tag along with them to start with. They would also like to have more farms to glean from. In the past, a regional gleaning coordinator financed by FeedBack liaised between the farms and the gleaning groups.
Project Plan
Produced in Kent, membership organisation of local independent food and drink businesses across Kent and Medway, wants to help establish a wider-reaching gleaning network across Kent and Medway to make sure less fresh produce is left rotting in a field, and can be offered to a wider network of food redistribution organisations. In collaboration with the University of Kent it will develop a gleaning and food redistribution infrastructure on its Canterbury campus to run as a 1-year pilot, consisting of the following components:
- A regional gleaning coordinator (preferably a student placement) working within the Produced in Kent team, who is responsible for managing the project, and for further developing FoodLoop as a redistribution tool of gleaned produce.
- Sector consultant Carol Ford who will support the gleaning coordinator to build a network of participating farms in the Kent Downs AONB area by:
- Promoting the project through the KCC-run Fresh Produce Task Force.
- Mapping the grower network in the Kent Downs AONB area and arrange info meetings.
- Onboarding growers onto the project and liaise with them on a 1-2-1 basis.
- Carrying out farm visits, risk assessments and crop recces.
- Training the gleaning coordinator in taking on the tasks at the conclusion of the consultancy period.
- A network of between 5-15 growers of fruit and veg located in or adjacent to the Kent Downs AONB area.
- A gleaning group consisting of 60:
- students and staff from the University of Kent
- volunteers from other community groups in the Canterbury area
- plus a volunteer coordinator
who are available at least once every three weeks on a weekday for a half day of gleaning at a Kent Downs AONB farm/redistribution at the Uni hub.
- A vehicle on loan to the gleaning group from the UoK for the duration of the project
- A quick turn-around cold-store facility at the UoK Canterbury campus to store a week’s gleaning until all has been redistributed in the area with the use of the FoodLoop app.
- The offer of first aid (refresher) courses to 6 members of the existing Deal With It and Hythe Community Group members (plus 6 dedicated volunteers in the student gleaning group), in exchange for supporting the student gleaning group on the ground until they are established and can work independently.
Project outcomes
- A template for a local food redistribution infrastructure to get surplus food off the field and redistributed to businesses, charities and community groups who need it.
- An established volunteer gleaning group servicing food redistribution organisations around Canterbury, as well as the University Foodbank and possibly several University food outlets.
- Less surplus produce left in the field, ploughed back into the soil or ending up in the anaerobic digester.
- An activity which helps a diverse group of young people discover and appreciate the countryside in the Kent Downs AONB.
- An activity that brings young students and other communities in contact with the farming sector and teaches them the realities of food production and the food supply chain.
- A farming community that is more receptive to gleaning.
- A trialled app that is fit for purpose and can be used as a channel to quickly redistribute surplus food going forward.
- Statistics on volumes of surplus gleaned from Kent fields and redistributed to those who need it to influence regional and national food policy development.
- A good news story amidst a cost-of-living crisis about the farming community pro-actively engaging with the local community in the redistribution of food surplus to the local community and the student population.
Enquiries
Floortje Hoette, e: Floortje.hoette@producedinkent.co.uk, m: 07734058309
