Overview

The Merrimack Valley Project (MVP) is searching for an experienced Staff Director / Lead Organizer.  MVP is a 16-year old community organization that unites congregations, local unions, and community groups in organizing campaigns for social and economic justice in the Merrimack Valley region of Massachusetts. The Staff Director / Lead Organizer will work with a team of talented leaders to advance effective organizing campaigns to improve the quality of life in Valley communities, and that grow out of the faith, values, and stories of our diverse and broad-based constituency. Currently, our top organizing priority is the MVP Campaign for Immigrant Justice, a groundbreaking initiative to uphold the rights and dignity of the Merrimack Valley’s more than 115,000 immigrants and refugees.

History and Accomplishments

In 1989, a group of faith, labor, and community leaders created the Merrimack Valley Project to unite people across the region’s widening racial, ethnic, and economic rifts in common action to strengthen communities in the Valley. Through MVP, people like the Rev. Victor Jarvis, an evangelical pastor from Lawrence, Father Jim Dukowski, a Catholic priest from Lowell, Annia Lembert, a Dominican immigrant, Malden Mills inspector and union member in Lawrence, and Eric Kintner, a physicist from an Episcopal church in Westford have worked together to save over 1,600 manufacturing jobs, protect over 600 units of affordable housing, improve the job prospects of the region’s growing temporary worker population, and bring over $10 million to the Valley for housing, job training, and community development.

MVP’s innovative campaigns to fight plant closings, to create democratic economic institutions such as Amesbury Gardens, a 160-unit, resident-owned affordable housing development in Lawrence, and to address the explosive growth of the temporary labor industry have offered statewide and national organizing models and have had an impact far beyond our region.

Today, MVP has grown to over 30 member groups, including congregations, unions, and community-based organizations from Amesbury, Andover, Chelmsford, Haverhill, Lawrence, Lowell, North Andover, and Westford.  MVP places a strong emphasis on developing the capacity of faith communities to act on their commitments to social and economic justice, and is part of a growing faith-and-values-based organizing movement in America. In 1998, MVP helped found the InterValley Project, a regional organizing network that unites the power of 6 community organizations to advance faith-and-values-based organizing throughout New England.

Responsibilities

• Recruit and develop leaders from a diverse membership of religious, labor, and community organizations in the Merrimack Valley.

• Staff organizing campaigns on economic and social justice issues, including immigration, jobs and workers’ rights, affordable housing, and other issues important to MVP’s constituency.

• Build the power of MVP through intentional relationship building and listening campaigns that engage people in our membership around their faith, values, and stories.

• Identify, recruit, supervise, and mentor other MVP staff organizers, organizer apprentices, field study students, and interns.

• Help the MVP leadership prepare, oversee, and fund a budget of $260,000+ per year.  This includes training leaders to conduct successful grassroots fundraising campaigns and membership dues collection, and consistent and effective foundation fundraising.

• Maintain a working relationship with and help develop the InterValley Project for staff and leadership development.

Qualifications

• Minimum 5 years work experience as a community, congregation-based, or labor organizer.

• Passion for social and economic justice, and strong commitment to faith- and values-based organizing.

• Proven ability to mentor leaders and carry out successful issue campaigns.

• Demonstrated track record in both grassroots and grant fund-raising.

• Experience supervising and developing other organizers and support staff for their own growth and for the growth of the organization.

• Appreciation for and ability to work with a broad range of religious and cultural traditions.

• Excellent team-building and communication skills, high energy, and strong one-to-one relationship-building skills.

• Ability to oversee a variety of administrative and management tasks.

• Experience working with diverse immigrant communities; bilingual ability in Spanish, Portuguese, French Creole, or Khmer preferred.

Competitive salary, commensurate with experience, with excellent benefits, including 4 weeks paid vacation.  Position will remain open until filled. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply.

Please send resume and cover letter as soon as possible to:

Reverend Victor Jarvis, President
Merrimack Valley Project
1045 Essex Street
Lawrence, Massachusetts  01841
Ph: (978) 686-0650
Fax: (978) 685-5665
email:  mvalleyp@aol.com
www.merrimackvalleyproject.org