Join the Climate Community Reporter scheme

We are recruiting 18 passionate local people from across our communities to collect and report insights on climate change.

Purpose of the role

Climate Community Reporters will gather perspectives from those who live, work, and study in Richmond upon Thames on key aspects of daily life that impact or are impacted by climate change.

They will explore people’s habits around things like travel across the borough, heating their homes, going about their shopping or managing their gardens.

These valuable insights, combined with broader research, will inform our new Climate Strategy for 2025 to 2030 and ensure that community perspectives remain at the heart of our future plans to achieve Net Zero emissions by 2043.  

Who can apply

We want the scheme to represent the range of people who spend a significant amount of time in the borough, so anyone who works, volunteers, lives or is educated full-time in the borough can apply for the role.

Reflecting borough demographics

We will be carefully tracking applications against key borough demographics. We want the people we choose to reflect the diversity of the people that live and work in the borough. 

Time commitment

Climate Community Reporters will spend a maximum of 28 hours between August and October training or working in their communities.

We want people to engage with the community when they believe they will be most effective rather than set specific times to make it as open and accessible as possible. Therefore, people with full time jobs can apply for this role and should be able to do the reporting scheme comfortably alongside their work. 

Pay

The Climate Community Reporter role is a voluntary position, however, as a gesture of thanks to those giving up their time, we will be gifting vouchers at the end of the process.

Reporters will be able to choose from a range of voucher options, with the value based on the number of hours volunteered and the London Living Wage of £13.15 per hour.

We are planning for each Reporter to spend 28 hours conducting engagement or training – however there is the option to do more hours as volunteering.

Training and support

Reporters will undergo training which should take no more than a couple of hours, to ensure they understand how to engage with people in the most effective manner. This time will be counted toward their 28 hours which they are remunerated for.

Reporters will also receive an induction pack and ‘playbook’, and we will work with them to help them plan the best ways to engage members of the borough, and Copper Consultancy will be on hand to help reporters with any questions they have throughout the process.

We will continually provide support to reporters to ensure they can effectively carry out the role, and will evaluate their work throughout the process every month. 

Application process

As part of the recruitment process, we need to ask you a few questions about you, to ensure the group of reporters are as representative as possible of the people who make up our borough. 

All the answers you give will be kept confidential and will be used for selection purposes only. Specifically, your contact details will only be used to contact you regarding this application and will only be kept for the length of the recruitment process.

We appreciate these questions may be sensitive for some people and, therefore, if you would prefer not to answer a question, you have the option to not answer. However, this may impact our ability to select you on the basis that we need to ensure the group of reporters are as representative as possible of the borough.  

Submit your application

Timescales

Once we receive your application we will review your details and get in touch. You should receive a response by the first week of August 2024.