Community Links is recruiting up to 10 Advisory Committee members on a voluntary (unpaid) basis.

Community Links is a local charity based in Newham with a national impact. For over 40 years, we’ve have been working to tackle poverty and social exclusion in the most deprived neighbourhoods across East London. Through both our direct work, as well as our extensive network of projects, we help people of all ages; empowering individuals to support themselves and each other. Our social enterprise, Links Event Solutions (LES), generates funding to support our work.

In 2016, we joined Catch22 - a charity and social business. In early 2021, we will build on our partnership and merge fully with Catch22, while retaining a separate brand, maintaining our commitment to Newham, and seeking to develop our programmes and services. The Advisory Committee is central to this.

The role of the Advisory Committee is to safeguard Community Links’ legacy, reputation and shape our future activities; ensuring Community Links continues to thrive while being part of Catch22. The full Advisory Committee Terms of Reference, including a list of key responsibilities, is available here.

We are looking to recruit Committee Members who are as passionate as we are about helping the community.

Committee Members will be drawn from a variety of personal and professional backgrounds, with an emphasis on reflecting the diverse communities where Community Links works, the ability to provide local intelligence, and the ability to scrutinise technical elements such as the annual budget.

If you can answer yes to any of these questions, then we would like to hear from you:

• Are you from Newham, or elsewhere in East London, and do you have an understanding of the sorts of issues that matter most to the diverse community in these areas?

• Do you have professional or personal experience of homelessness, debt services, welfare benefits, poverty, employability services, food banks, health inequality, mental health, youth services, community services and so on?

• Are you a current or former Community Links service user, or a service user of another local community charity or faith organisation, who is passionate about using your experience to help others?

• Do you work for a statutory body like the Council, responsible for delivering services for the community?

• Do you work for a local business and have an active interest in the community whether through formal CSR programmes or volunteering?

• Do you have the technical skills, knowledge and experience to scrutinise budgets, input into strategy and help develop charitable programmes and services?

Advisory Committee members are unpaid. However reasonable expenses will be provided to enable members to attend meetings.

Appointments will be made on a two-year cycle, renewable for a maximum of four years

The Committee will meet for 2 hours three four times a year, unless it agrees to meet more frequently for specific reasons.

Candidates are encouraged to apply by submitting a CV and short statement about their motivation for applying and how they meet any one or more of the questions listed under 'qualifications' above.