FILLED- Common Ground is Seeking a Mobile Market Manager & Farm Crew Support

Mobile Market Manager & Farm Crew Support

Part Time Seasonal Position
July-September 2018

Organization Overview

Common Ground is a center for environmental learning and leadership in New Haven, Connecticut where a diverse community of children, young people, and adults cultivate habits of healthy living and sustainable environmental practice. Farm meets forest meets city on Common Ground’s 20 acre campus at the base of West Rock Ridge. The site abuts the 1500 acre West Rock State Park, sharing hiking trails, wildlife, and diverse natural habitats with the surrounding forests. Common Ground delivers three tightly knit programs on site and in the community.

1. Common Ground’s college preparatory Charter High School uses the site and the City as an organizing principle of its curriculum which is guided by an ecological framework that recognizes the connection and interdependence of all living and non-living things.
2. The Environmental Education Center receives more than 12,000 community members/year who participate in festivals, field trips, after-school programs, and other educational opportunities on site.
3. Our Urban Farm is a key resource for both the high school and community programs, as well as for the greater New Haven community. It includes both production and educational gardens used to demonstrate and teach lessons in agriculture.

Common Ground has a commitment to examining the intersection of social, environmental, and food justice issues; how systems of oppression, including white privilege, impact the organization’s work; and how resistance to those systems can offer windows into a more sustainable society. For more information on Common Ground, see www.commongroundct.org.

Job Description

Mobile Market Manager – Part Time, Seasonal Position

Common Ground is accepting applications for a Mobile Market Manager to head up Common Ground’s Mobile Farm Stand.
The Mobile Market, in its fifth full year of operation, is a farmstand on wheels that brings fresh produce from Connecticut farms directly to New Haven neighborhoods, along with cooking demonstrations and tastings of local, fresh fruits and vegetables. The Mobile Market visits areas throughout New Haven, that face food insecurity and don’t have access to farmers markets or fresh fruits and vegetables at local stores, including housing authority and senior living sites, during the summer months. Common Ground provides the Mobile Market with vegetables and student workers from their Green Jobs Corps Program, a youth employment and leadership development program that links students with meaningful, paid work. This season the Market is in partnership with City Seed, Elm City Communities and Cornell Scott Hill Health Centers.
Market Manager will be responsible for driving the Mobile Market truck to the scheduled sites, setting up tables, displaying produce and interacting with customers to promote healthful eating, explain SNAP, WIC and FMNP benefits, and selling produce. In addition, the Manager is responsible for ordering from our partner farms, data collection, and market promotion. The Manager will also be required to oversee and train our summer youth apprentices in market activities. Assistance for this program will also be provided by additional part time staff and Interns.

Farm Support-

For 5-10 hours a week, this person can support our our ¾ acre production farm where we grow food for the Mobile Market, our school Cafeteria, on Site Farm Stand and Student vegetable shares. Farm responsibilities include, greenhouse work, transplanting, weeding, bed preparation, harvesting, irrigation, pest and disease management, harvest and post harvest handling, animal care and record keeping. If you are not interested in this part of the position, and still interested in the Market Manager Position, please let us know.

Qualifications

Qualified applicants must have excellent interpersonal skills, facility with numbers, retail sales experience, a valid drivers’ license with a clean driving record. Knowledge of seasonal produce and experience with youth is helpful. Some moderately heavy lifting is required during setup and breakdown of market sites.

Details

This is a part-time position, working 20 hours a week Tuesday and Thursday afternoon/evenings with other flexible hours built in. The anticipated start date is Tuesday July 3rd with the markets beginning the second week of July and ending the 2nd week of September. The position ends September 21st. Compensation range is $17/hour. Applicants will be notified if there are any changes to the program.

Please send resume and cover letter to Deborah Greig at deborah.greig@commongroundct.org by June 26th.