Community Coordinator

We are seeking a Community Coordinator to facilitate community-building and leadership development within the Walworth Living Room, a project of Pembroke House, and manage volunteering as a way to engage with the work of the organisation. Part of your role will be to help build community and leadership within the Walworth Living Room, to facilitate relationship building and to work with residents to develop infrastructures for shared leadership within the space.

The Walworth Living Room is a relatively new venture for Pembroke House. It is a “living room” for the Walworth neighbourhood, a space currently open to the public Thursday and Friday from 10pm to 3pm for people to hang out, enjoy various activities, build relationships with each other, eat, learn, share and create. It is a place where people can work together to develop models of collective support and of collective control over community resources. You may be facilitating a group of residents to make decisions about how the Living Room should be used one day, helping set up a food cooperative the next and supporting two residents to navigate a conflict the next. Our current organisational focus areas are food, health and the arts. The funding for this role is largely related to food and health, and therefore many of the projects you develop will address these areas.

The other part of your role is to oversee volunteers for the Living Room and our other programmes, recruiting them and supporting programme leads to manage their work, while encouraging them to take leadership within the projects they volunteer with.

The person we appoint to this role will be a people person and a good listener who is comfortable working with people who experience challenges in their lives. You will have experience working in low income/working class communities and communities of colour. You’ll be someone who does not approach this work from a “saviour” viewpoint, but someone who respects the experience and expertise in the community, and who is keen to support people to solve problems collectively and take leadership in the life of the community. You will be flexible and curious about what you can learn from the people you are working with. You will be comfortable working in a changing environment and excited about helping the Walworth Living Room figure out what it is to become. You will be someone who can work well in a team, treating colleagues with care and respect, but also someone who doesn’t need to be told what to do, but can take initiative to help develop this still young programme.

Pembroke House is a centre for social action and residential community in Walworth, south-east London. We were founded in 1885, by students from Pembroke College, Cambridge, as one of the first settlement houses. Shocked by growing poverty and inequality, the pioneers of the settlement movement sought a
new approach: taking up residence to live, work and solve problems alongside local communities. For over 130 years, we’ve been working to bridge traditional divides and unite people – whatever their background or walk of life – in building a better Walworth.