CYAP is hiring a Wellness Organizer!

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**This position is no longer available**

The Carolina Youth Action Project (CYAP) is an abolitionist organization building power among girls, trans youth, and gender nonconforming youth through political education, creative resistance, and community organizing. We envision a South Carolina transformed by the radical organizing of girls, trans youth, and gender nonconforming youth, where our communities work collectively to dismantle the existing structures of domination, violence, and punishment that shape their lives and create spaces for growth and healing in their place.

We believe young people can most effectively transform their communities when they have access to political education, leadership development, and organizing opportunities. By building power among girls, transgender youth, and gender nonconforming youth, CYAP works to develop the necessary infrastructure for radical change in the South.

CYAP is seeking a Wellness Organizer to provide trauma-informed care to support the wellness of our youth leaders. The Wellness Organizer will serve as a member of a collective of core organizers. Our core collective grounds CYAP’s work and consistently engages in rigorous self-reflection, emotional communication, and healing. CYAP is a growing organization and provides opportunities for core organizers to expand their roles and salaries as the organization expands.

We believe that our team should reflect the communities in which we work. Therefore, women, transgender people, gender nonconforming people, people of color, working class people, and people who have been directly impacted by the justice system are strongly encouraged to apply.

Responsibilities

Social Work, Counseling, Wellness Work  

  • Provide trauma-informed specialized counseling for youth leaders

  • Submit immediate needs assessments and reports as necessary

  • Support youth leaders in developing effective coping skills

  • Offer youth crisis support

  • Develop safety plans with youth leaders

  • Submit monthly updates on youth support

  • Connect youth leaders with relevant resources  

  • Develop organizational immediate needs policy

  • Facilitate trainings for youth leaders, volunteers, and core organizers

Core Collective (shared responsibilities)

  • Attend and co-facilitate weekly core team meetings

  • Contribute to strategic planning and organizational development

  • Support operations, youth initiatives, and campaign work

  • Support with future hiring and training of new organizers

  • Maintain regular communication with board members

  • Participate in annual board convenings

  • Assist with communications and social media strategy

  • Travel to select conferences, trainings, convenings, and site visits

  • Develop and strengthen alliances with (potential) partner organizations

  • Create and be accountable to individual leadership development plan

  • Participate in semi-annual evaluations

  • Engage in continued self-reflection and political development

  • Help establish CYAP as a political home for young people

  • Communicate openly about any organizational questions, conflicts, and concerns

Helpful Skills & Experience  

  • Strong verbal and written communication skills

  • Proficiency with Google Applications and Microsoft Office

  • Ability to work independently and collectively

  • Base-building and outreach

  • Facilitation and curriculum development

  • Political education and skill sharing

  • Team management

  • Event planning

  • Communications and social media strategizing

  • Conflict mediation

  • Community organizing

  • Spanish proficiency and/or fluency

  • Experience supporting youth of color, queer and trans youth, poor and working class youth, youth involved in the criminal legal system and/or foster care system

Helpful Trauma-Informed Experience & Understandings

  • Healing Justice

  • Sanctuary Model

  • Vicarious trauma support

  • Safety planning

  • Somatics

  • Harm reduction

  • Youth counseling

  • Youth crisis support

  • Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

  • Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR)

  • Master of Social Work or Counseling (completed or in progress)

Helpful Political Understandings

  • Prison abolition, restorative justice, transformative justice

  • Feminism / womanism, anti-racism

  • Popular education

  • Identity, intersectionality, positionality

  • Respectability and disposability politics

  • Impact of neoliberalism, capitalism, colonization, imperialism, militarism, and other forms of state violence on various communities

  • Political landscape in Charleston and the larger state of South Carolina

  • Legacy of violence and resistance in the Southeastern United States

Compensation

  • $35,000/year with a monthly health care & phone stipend. The Wellness Organizer position will exist as a temporary role between August 2019 and August 2020. There is potential, however, for the position to extend beyond that time frame and/or become permanent.

  • Folks who are currently Master’s students in Counseling, Social Work, or a related field may also utilize this position to fulfill their internship requirement. For any folks who are working towards their licensure, supervision hours will be considered as part of their weekly working hours.   

Timeline

  • Application deadline: Friday, June 14th - 11:59 PM EST

  • Ideal start date: Monday, August 26th


Application Details

  • To apply, please send a resume, responses to the three prompts below, and other other relevant documents to info@scyouthaction.org

    • What specific skills or experiences will you bring to the Wellness Organizer position?

    • Share a story that speaks to your commitment to your own personal healing and/or wellness.

    • Share three possible interventions you might try to support the young person in the scenario below:

      • Tyler is a sixteen year old gender nonconforming youth leader who recently joined this year’s Youth Action Alliance. During your first counseling session together, they mention that they hate living with their aunt and have been caught running away from home twice in the last six months. Tyler explains their aunt has been forcing them read religious texts each night, refusing to call them by their correct name or pronouns, and, last week, threw out some of the clothing they feel most comfortable wearing. Tyler has mentioned before that they have gotten into screaming matches with their aunt and once got so angry they threw a lamp at her. They mention feeling angry and hopeless and want to move out of their aunt’s home as soon as possible.

Carolina Youth Action Project