Public Sector / Voluntary Sector Leadership course for Refugees - Call for Participants

Refugee Action are offering an interactive training course aimed at exploring public and voluntary sector management and leadership.

The course is specifically targeted at people from a refugee background who have already got a foothold in the public, voluntary or community sectors and are looking to progress.

The project is aimed at addressing the lack of appropriate support for refugees who are looking to progress into public or voluntary sector management roles or who are looking to become Trustees or Board representatives of established organisations in order to develop their management and leadership skills.

Participants would be expected to work towards a leadership role during the course; the leadership role could be paid or voluntary (e.g. line management at a public or voluntary sector organisation; volunteer management within a voluntary sector organisation; Trustee role on an established charity; school governor; Healthwatch Board member etc).

There are 12 places on the course: 8 for Refugee Action staff; and 4 for people outside of Refugee Action.

Course participants will:
• Develop a deep understanding of the values, qualities and skills they associate with strong leadership and management
• Develop a deep understanding of their own leadership and management values, approaches and skills and identify ways of contrasting these against the above outcome
• Develop practical management and leadership skills
• Develop their confidence to apply their learning and are able to articulate it
• Develop an on-going learning and development plan (beyond the course)
• Be supported to take on or move towards a formal management or leadership role

The course will start in August 2013 and will run through to March 2014.

Criteria for selecting course participants and commitment required
• Participants should be from a refugee or asylum-seeker background
• Participants should have the right to work in the UK
• Participants should be willing to take on a real leadership / management role (with support) during the course
• Participants should either already be established in a frontline public or voluntary sector role and be looking to progress into management or leadership roles; or should have a more informal community leadership role (e.g. on a management committee of a community group) – please give some examples of your experience in your expression of interest
• Participants should be committed to a future formal leadership or management role (i.e. very interested in progressing into management or leadership roles)
• Participants should be committed to taking on or working towards a more formal management or leadership role (paid or unpaid) as part of the course
• Participants should feel that the course will benefit their professional and personal development – please give examples in your expression of interest of what you see yourself doing in the future around management and leadership and why
• Participants should be willing to put some additional time into the course (e.g. writing short reports, reading documents, watching videos, doing voluntary work in a management or leadership capacity)
• Participants should enjoy looking at how they do things in their work, identifying ways of improving (ie self-evaluation / reflection)

How to apply
As places on the course are limited, Refugee Action will be choosing the 4 candidates who can best show they meet the criteria. So if you want to apply to attend this course, please write an “expression of interest” and explaining why you think you meet all the criteria. Your expression of interest should be no more than 2 sides of A4 paper.

A simple CV of approximately 1 side of A4 paper should also be submitted.

Deadline: Friday 9 August 2013