Job Description
As a Community Development Officer with the Toronto Newcomer Office, you’ll play a key role in advancing the City’s strategies related to settlement and integration of newcomers. You’ll perform a variety of project management, advice and coordination duties, such as initiating and managing local planning tables to achieve inter-sectoral partnerships and improve service integration. You’ll also identify, and work with, key City divisions, community partners and other stakeholders, to identify the existing capacity to facilitate and/or support the successful integration of newcomers and refugees, including identifying service gaps, developing strategies and plans to address them, and initiating their implementation.
This is a highly collaborative role, calling for you to work with key stakeholders to develop and implement appropriate strategies to address needs and improve access by implementing projects, partnerships and coalitions that promote inter-sectoral linkages. A skilled community capacity builder, you’ll work with communities, service providers, governments, newcomer organizations and other institutions to develop and support innovative, accessible service responses to identified community and newcomer needs, and integrate anti-oppression and community engagement principles into place-based community development programs and initiatives. Through policy development and strategic planning, you’ll also assist in the development and capacity building of organizations, networks and community groups established to meet identified service needs.
Comfortable working as a subject matter expert, you’ll act as a resource for City staff and politicians in identifying, and acting on, current and anticipated issues related to immigration and newcomers, and provide expertise, facilitation and support for corporate, divisional and City-wide initiatives. You’ll also work with, and assist, other City staff to enhance their skills in working with newcomers through consultation and education on newcomer settlement issues.
A relationship builder at all levels, able to write thorough, concise reports, you’ll design, develop and present information sessions for diverse audiences, build, maintain and/or coordinate relevant networks and service coordination mechanisms, and communicate and interpret relevant policies, programs and initiatives to the community and newcomer sector.
Key Qualifications
Among the strengths you bring to the role of Community Development Officer will be the following key qualifications:
- Considerable experience in community development and newcomer/settlement/immigration issues, working within an anti-oppression framework and creating and implementing responses to address barriers and changing needs of communities.
- Extensive project management experience, including issue management agenda setting, and conflict resolution.
- Considerable experience in the development, design and delivery of a community engagement and consultation process.
- Experience working from a place-based (local level) approach and integrated service planning processes such as Neighbourhood Action, Local Immigration Partnerships, Youth Employment, and Crisis Response.
- Degree in Sociology or Social Work, or an approved equivalent combination of education and/or experience.
Through this background, you’ve become familiar with organizational development, inter-sectoral linkages, community capacity building and advocacy, with the sociology of a large, complex urban area with an ethno-racially, linguistically and economically diverse population, and with the human service system in the City. Together with this knowledge, you have the ability to establish effective working relationships with team members, all City service areas, community organizations, representatives from various levels of government and elected officials, and, in particular, to develop consensus and recommend effective, strategic solutions at the City and community levels.
Excellent interpersonal and problem-solving skills, the ability to communicate effectively at a management level – verbally and in writing – and sound managerial judgement in public and human relations are also essential in this role. Equally important, you’re able to support the Toronto Public Service values to ensure a culture that champions equity, diversity and respectful workplaces.