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We know how much you've missed your monthly #ChannelsNet newsletters 💙
Dear members and friends of The Channels Network,
Gabriella here! I hope you have all missed Channels as much as we’ve missed you.
During a hiatus from some of our regular Channels activities, our team has had time to regroup, rest, and re-strategise our activities. The main focus of our reflections has been: how can Channels serve our members better?
There have been a few outcomes from those conversations, summarised below in the ‘What’s new in Channels?’ section. ⬇️
For now, we want to welcome you back to our monthly newsletter, where we’ll be bringing you insights about Social Impact Communications (#SocialImpactComms), trends and news in our field, highlighting opportunities and members, and more.
Our new Substack account is broken up into 3 newsletters:
#SocialImpactComms (the classic, crowd-favourite monthly update)
#SocialImpactComms Jobs (get our weekly job round-ups straight to your inbox!)
The Channels Blog (where we post articles & submissions from our members)
I’d also like to take this opportunity to welcome Tanya Kathuria to the Channels team. Tanya will be our new Newsletter Editor, so make sure to give her a warm welcome!
So, without further ado…
What we’re reading this month
The very first post in our new ‘ImpacTea with Tanya’ series, featured on the shiny new Channels Blog. Here’s what Tanya has to say about digital social impact…
…the current system does not account for user-centric content on digital platforms; most social organizations are still posting what they feel is relevant while disregarding what the beneficiary and the audience want to engage with. When we talk about digital transformation in the social sector, I think it is important to take in account who we are working for and who we want to educate; and also indulge in a stakeholder analysis at every step of the way especially when we are creating social media strategies.
Meet our members
As part of our efforts to highlight the amazing accomplishments of our community, we started a new initiative on LinkedIn called #ChannelsNet Member Features. When you see a feature pop up on your LinkedIn feed, make sure to give it a like, a share, or an encouraging comment to the up-and-coming job seeker. Remember that what goes around comes around. 😉
Here are some members we think you should meet:
Carolin Hildebrandt, who has been working in the field of circular economy for the past 1.5 years and would love to take on a new challenge in that field, but would also happily do Public Relations, Social Media Management, blogging, copywriting and editing or political communication for a social impact organisation.
Melissa Hobson, a marine science, conservation and sustainability copywriter and PR consultant. She works with organisations that are passionate about making a positive difference to our ocean, our planet and people’s lives.
Kristi Eaton (she/her), a journalist turned comms pro who has reported or conducted comms work in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Pacific Rim. I'm interested in gender, human rights and migrants and refugees.
Élodie Mbida, Influence Communication Consultant. Her areas of expertise include institutional communication, executive communication, crisis communication, public relations and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Elodie supports several high-level players in their image management, reputation and CSR approaches.
Fill out our form to be featured!
#SocialImpactComms Jobs
Earlier this week, we posted our 42nd #SocialImpactComms job board! How exciting! Here are some of the awesome opportunities we rounded up which have some 🚨upcoming deadlines, so don’t delay:
Resourcing Feminist Movements Engagement Lead - Association for Women's Rights in Development - Remote - 26 June
Assistant Editor - Gender and Development Journal (Oxfam) - based in India - 1 July
Policy & Advocacy Program Manager - Rainforest Foundation - Remote in the U.S.A. - Rolling deadline
International Communications Associate - Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids - Washington, D.C., U.S.A - Rolling deadline
Consultancy: Senior Manager Communications & Advocacy - Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance - Geneva, Switzerland (remote agreement possible) - 20 June
Research & Communications Assistant - The Institute for Peace and Diplomacy - Remote - 20 June
Information and Communication Officer for Corporate Campaigns of the European Commission (Temporary Agent) - The Directorate-General for Communication (DG COMM) - Brussels, Belgium - 30 June
Internship Event Management & Communications - International Labour Organization - Geneva, Switzerland - 24 June
Social Media Specialist - Eurocities - Brussels, Belgium - 30 June
Campaigns, Projects & Networks Coordinator - Amnesty International - London, U.K. - 14 June
Economic Justice Campaigner - Friends of the Earth Europe - Brussels, Belgium - 30 June
Call for submissions - Are We Europe Magazine
Find even more jobs on our job round-up archive here.
💡 Hot tip: Even if you’re not currently looking for career opportunities, it’s important to stay on top of what’s happening in the hiring world of our field! We suggest everyone browses through some job offers at least every few weeks to see what skills, competencies, and experiences are asked for these days.
What’s new in Channels?
Website: We stopped using our website at thechannelsnetwork.com because it was expensive, and this is a grassroots initiative! We’ve been using a notion page for now to summarise who we are and to store the round-ups, but this is subject to change soon, too. We’re just volunteers, having fun, testing things, figuring things out 😇
Blog posts: We have landed on a great solution for our blog posts! Since we moved websites, the amazing posts that you all wrote haven’t been available, but now that we have this shiny new Substack, we’ll be publishing our posts here over the coming weeks and months.
Job round-ups: these have remained super active! Massive thanks to Elisabeth Roura Bosch who is our main jobs round-up volunteer, and snaps to Ruth Namara who has been a great help as well. We've gotten into a weekly rhythm which I think is great! Email us at thechannelsnetwork@gmail.com with any opportunities you come across, or send them to Elisabeth on LinkedIn to have them included.
Volunteering with round-ups: A few people have reached out asking how they can be more involved in the jobs round-ups. We're thinking of a process to share the tasks, so we'll keep you updated on how to get involved!
Membership: As part of our reflections, we asked ourselves what we can truly provide to our members, and a big part of the answer is opportunities, information, and guidance for our members, especially early-career and young professionals starting out in #SocialImpactComms.
What does it mean to be a member of The Channels Network? Learn more here!
Content we’ve enjoyed consuming
Just starting your career out in comms? 👉Check out the ‘Early Years in Comms Career Guide’ from Adedoyin Jaiyesimi, the co-founder of The Comms Avenue, a capacity-building and networking platform for communications professionals across the world.
A new study looks at the most effective type of LinkedIn content - check it out!
The world is in crisis, and what do we do as communications professionals? Read the advice from ZN Consulting.
💙 Channels’s very own Newsletter Editor, Tanya Kathuria, posted an important reminder on what “communications for social impact” really means.
For journalists and writers in the development sector: The European Journalism Centre released their handbook for pitching development stories.
Digital marketing consultant & trainer Surojit Mahato posted a list of FREE online resources to learn digital marketing.
Knowledgeable about science/academic/policy comms? Redante Asuncion-Reed asked for examples of SEO & content marketing techniques used to promote and publicise academic and scholarly content. Help him out!
Devin Bramhall shared some fire 🔥 thought-leadership on LinkedIn about social media as a distribution or community building tool. What do you think?
When we think of agile, we don’t often think of some of the biggest international and intranational governmental organisations… but Nicholas Bruneau made us think again! Read his post: how the European Commission embraced agile communications during the pandemic.
Want to feature something in our monthly #SocialImpactComms newsletter? Feel free to reply to this email or send a LinkedIn DM to anyone on the Channels team!