New-position_Port

Centre Director – A Rocha Portugal

A Rocha Portugal is searching for a couple to run their Centre as Centre Directors. These people play a major role in the organization as the Centres are a hub of life, sometimes with a life in itself, where people from all backgrounds get together to work, rest, study or just experience A ROCHA for a short time. Working and living at the Centre is an opportunity to invite and welcome people to share life, to work hard, to study, to get involved in conservation and to grow together for God.

If the paragraphs from A Place at the Table didn’t put off your enthusiasm to apply then we recommend that you read the detailed Job Description.

Position: Centre Director
Position type: Full-time with three months trial
Location: Cruzinha, Mexilhoeira Grande, Algarve, Portugal 
Salary: Self-funded
Looking for: Married couple, preferably with small children

Purpose of position

The Centre Director manages the Centre, surrounding grounds and all activities associated with these in close relationship with the Executive Director.

The Centre Director ensures that general Centre maintenance takes place and oversees its management and day-to-day running.

Skills summary

  • A heart for hospitality and Christian discipleship
  • Ability to carry out general maintenance (from electrics to plumbing and all general
  • Centre equipment) and upkeep of the building. Ensuring the site is ready for daily
  • activities
  • Capability for administration and organization, for overseeing the booking and use
  • of Centre resources and facilities
  • Ability to handle health and safety, operational and financial matters (related to the
  • centre and shopping)
  • Competence to handle food shopping, cooking and/or supervising a cook
  • The willingness to handle daily ad hoc responsibilities
  • Possession of a driver’s licence (B & B1)

 

The Centre Director is expected to carry out the following key responsibilities and duties:

Execute or supervise general Centre and equipment maintenance

  • This person/couple should have general Centre maintenance skills and be able to evaluate issues, from electrics to plumbing, to ascertain whether a professional is needed.

Person specification

  • Serving heart and a love of looking after others, regardless of status at the Centre (volunteer or visitor)
  • Happy to be surrounded by people all day long and able to manage during quieter periods
  • Committed to A Rocha’s biblical and Nature Conservation values
  • Mature Christian with spiritual insight
  • Member of a local church
  • Self-motivated
  • Excellent interpersonal and
    communication skills
  • Attention to detail
  • Committed to team working
  • Ability to remain calm under pressure
FULL JOB DESCRIPTION

If after reading the Job Description you still think that you are suitable candidates, then do get the following ready:

  • Your CV;
  • Your Motivation Letter, including a short text indicating what you think running an A ROCHA Centre is all about, your understanding of the Job Description and why you think you are suited for the job;
  • A short video, less than five minutes, in which you introduce yourselves and indicate why we should move you to the final stage.

When you have all these ready you can fill in the Application Form.

APPLICATION FORM
A-Rocha-Table

A Gathering at the Table

We’re excited to announce the launch of a new initiative: a community of regular givers who are committed to seeing nature flourish. We’re calling it the ‘A Rocha Table’ and we’d love you to join! Thanks to A Rocha’s fabulous supporters, we have been responding to the global crisis of biodiversity loss for nearly 40 years, and we believe it’s this long-term commitment to people and places that makes the difference. By setting up a regular donation to A Rocha International you can help be a part of this commitment to caring for our most vulnerable habitats, species and communities and help us make longer term plans with confidence. We want to make sure you know how much your giving matters. Every six months, we’ll send you an issue of our ‘Table Talk’ emailing. It will contain highlights from the A Rocha Worldwide Family, invitations to exclusive online events and special discounts on A Rocha books and publications. We hope it will be a way for us to keep in touch with you better and help you feel more connected to A Rocha around the world. We hope to see you at the Table soon!
MORE INFO

Sign up to the A Rocha Table

Friends-of

Making Friends in Central America

Around the world, Christians are coming together to care for creation – and A Rocha is lending a hand through the Friends of A Rocha Network. Network members are groups and organizations, led by committed Christians, who are undertaking biodiversity conservation and interested in sharing and learning together with like-minded groups around the world. 

To learn more about the current Friends and to see if your group could apply, see the Friends page. Meanwhile, meet our two most recent members: 

Casa Adobe is an intentional Christian community rooted in Santa Rosa, Heredia Province, Costa Rica. It was born in 2013 when people from different contexts and cultures came together with a common goal: to be good neighbours. Casa Adobe seeks to promote integral human development, facilitate cultural interchange amongst people from different contexts, care for the environment and stimulate its protection. 

Their current environmental activities include a local community composting project and a plan to recover one of Casa Adobe’s most neglected ‘neighbours’, the Virilla River. The Virilla flows down from its source in the cloud forests through densely populated areas where it is impacted by sewage, litter and degraded riverine forest. Casa Adobe is re-engaging the community with the river and liaising with other stakeholders. 

 

Huellas Panamá (meaning ‘Footprints’) was born in 2018 as a project in Kuna Nega, an indigenous settlement heavily impacted by the operation of Cerro Patacón, one of the main landfills in Panama. The original project raised environmental awareness in the community through the community church and setting up a waste collection point. 

Huellas Panamá is now setting up an online Virtual Academy to promote creation care theology and wiser consumption habits; supporting recycling as they can (there is no recycling collection in Panama!) and litter clean-ups; and developing an Eco Tours Programme to create opportunities for friendship, recreation and learning about caring for the earth.  

AR-Australia_planting-trees

Planting trees and restoring ecosystems in Australia

During another wet winter, A Rocha Australia has been getting their hands dirty by planting native plants and nurturing relationships with the communities who care for them.  

Volunteers from A Rocha Australia were invited by Clyde and Rose Rigney – elders from the Raukkan aboriginal community – to help with revegetation events in partnership with Cassina Environmental in South Australia. In June, over 30 people braved challenging weather to plant 1700 seedlings! In August, a smaller group planted 584 seedlings at Mount Sandy and 325 seedlings at Raukkan, this time in lovely sunshine. Alongside tree planting, the Rigneys offered inspiring hospitality, with singing round the fire, hot drinks, delicious food and inspirational storytelling.  

Another planting session was organised by Onkaparinga council staff at Hart Road Wetland, the traditional lands of the Kaurna people. Twenty adults and four children gathered to plant about 380 native plants. Several of these are endemic to South Australia, including Atriplex paludosa, Goodenia amplexans and Thomasia petalocalyx. These plants are not only unique to their particular area, but they are also critical to maintaining biodiversity. 

With their project in Toowoomba escarpment parks, A Rocha Australia goes beyond planting seedlings to protecting mature plants in Queensland. Partnering with Friends of the Escarpment Parks, A Rocha controls invasive weeds at three bushland parks which contain endangered ecosystems. At Redwood Park, A Rocha removes Cat’s claw creeper Dolichandra unguis-cati. This aptly named invasive plant is one of several that smother trees and shrubs, destroying the canopy and harming the ecosystem. Creeper control is slow and labourious work but highly rewarding as mature trees are cut free and seedlings are discovered underneath masses of removed creeper. The vulnerable Black-breasted Button-quail Turnix melanogaster has raised several sets of young under the semi-evergreen vine-thicket (‘dry rainforest’).  

In the eucalypt forest of Nielsen Park, A Rocha volunteers remove other choking weeds, allowing indigenous understory species to establish. And there are already positive results: bird surveys have found that several small bird species persist in the now generous cover of shrubs, including the first ever sightings of the ground-feeding Painted Button-quail Turnix varius in the park!