Our Community Gardens: 

Our network of 12 neighborhood organic gardens provides opportunities for hundreds of families to grow food that may be unavailable in their neighborhoods.
We boost Garden Captains’ leadership abilities and deliver streamlined support and resources to gardeners in our network who grow thousands of pounds of food each year.

Collaborations: 

This role will work with our community garden network and also coordinate some of our long-term, big picture partnerships and projects.
Our partnerships are creating opportunities for community gardeners to be involved in urban farmer training programs and creative program evaluation projects.
We offer an intensive, year-long Urban Farmer Training Program with local partners for gardeners interested in growing for market. This will generate local economic activity while meeting demands for culturally appropriate produce at Bridgeport’s farmers markets!

Our partnership with Fairfield University allows us to compensate a group of community gardeners to evaluate the impact of our garden program on the family, neighborhood and city of Bridgeport, and potentially public a cookbook this year of Bridgeport-based recipes unique to our city's community gardeners.


Position Specifics: 

This position consists of both indoor and field-based work, requiring the ability to multi-task, work outdoors in hot and cold weather, conduct garden and farm work (including heavy lifting), and be part of a passionate team dedicated to helping each other achieve goals in creating a more just food system in Bridgeport.

This position will, with the support of supervision, implement and annual work plan for our Community Garden Program with goals and milestones resulting in more strategic technical assistance and support to Community Gardeners and Garden Captains throughout Bridgeport.

This includes leading up resource distribution, maintaining contact with Garden Captains throughout the year, deepening relationships with community gardeners, and responding to needs of gardeners. The person in this position will partner with our GVI’s Urban Farm Team and Community Outreach Team to ensure that our seasonal, on-farm workshops directly correspond to gardeners’ interests.

This position is responsible for the following activities:

• Identify topics of interest among gardeners for GVI’s workshop series. Identify presenters from within our gardening community to facilitate peer-to-peer learning.
• Continually improve and distribute resources, including crop plans and toolkits.
• Maintain multilingual gardener registration. Update registration and waitlist processes.
• Organize Spring Kick Off to facilitate community garden plot registration and workshops.
• Ensure effective communication with Garden Captains and community gardeners. This includes:
• coordinating monthly or quarterly captains meetings; keeping up to date contact information for all gardeners; and regularly visiting gardens and managing data to create a comprehensive understanding of garden contacts, successes, challenges, and needed support; and communicating to gardeners about workshops and events offered by GVI and partners.
• Schedule and coordinate cleanup days and garden builds, including leading volunteer groups.
• Work with Fairfield University to continue evaluation and data collection project throughout the year. This includes coordinating monthly meetings, a pre-season garden enrollment and an end-of-season evaluation meeting with gardeners.
• Organize and further develop our Urban Farmer Training Program. This includes: conducting outreach; managing scholarship applications; collecting data on classroom topics, attendance, and farming; coordinating mission-aligned presentations and trainings (such as Food Justice; farmers market vending; food safety); and identifying areas of improvement.
• Support Farm Team in growing and distributing seedlings for community gardens, when possible. This includes: seeding, transplanting, prepping beds, and leading seedling distribution.
• Work collaboratively, towards shared goals, with members of the GVI Team.
• Represent Green Village Initiative at community events and meetings and exploring opportunities to expand GVI’s strategic partnerships.
• Other activities as needed.

Necessary Skills and Experience

• Experience gardening or farming for at least one full growing season.
• Experience working in, and knowledge of and commitment to, food justice.
• Effective verbal and written communication skills; conversational Spanish is a major plus!
• Proficiency in Google Suite and Microsoft Office and an ability to maintain and update data and information in a way that is user-friendly across a team
• Ability to develop and lead multiple projects independently and to seek direction when needed
• Excitement to work in a fast-paced organization and to learn more about food justice, urban agriculture and non-profit organizations.
• Ability to perform physical at garden work (e.g. kneeling, lifting, bending) including in extreme heat and cold.
• Access to reliable transportation to and from garden sites
• A commitment to GVI’s mission, and a sense of responsibility to the Bridgeport community