join the arch-peace team: volunteer positions

Join the arch-peace team: new volunteer positions
(arch-peace's members only)

Architects for Peace is looking for arch-peace members to join the team and to take on the following volunteer responsibilities:

1. Members’ person (Melbourne):
This is a core role and one that has the capacity to greatly improve our stance as a professional organisation. This role requires someone confident, outgoing, friendly and with a good knowledge of the activities undertaken by arch-peace. Good computer and writing skills are important.

This role is required to:

• Greet the new member
• Respond to all specific queries and comments in the registration form
• Get in touch with the new member and explore ways for their involvement
• If the opportunities for involvement exist, invite the new member to participate
• Follow up with a call or email
• Record the experiences and inform arch-peace team about the learning
• Be proactive in regards to ways to involve new international members in activities over the internet (website) or by assisting them to establish their own local group (e.g. Sydney has a large number of members, however, they are not currently organised as a group)
• Gather, organise and maintain a record of members’ possible contributions (e.g. writing articles, presenting to seminars, volunteering pro bono service, organising, campaigning, fundraising…)

Note: this volunteer position involves attending one committee meeting per month and to be in touch with what all the teams are doing. It may require a commitment of 3-4 hours a month for the above tasks.

2. Website geek (Melbourne + other places):
Do you enjoy designing cool webpages? Please come and see us. We are looking for someone who can spend a few hours per month (around 4-5 hours), to improve our website interactive communication.

So far, Frederico (our member in Brazil) has created a great website to discuss local issues. This can be done by you wherever you live and in English or your own language
This position requires:
• Someone with very good internet/html/PHP… skills, very familiar with Blogger or other free services and with great graphic design skill and people skills.
• Capacity to involve members in an interactive communication around their interests

Note: this volunteer position involves a commitment of 3-4 hours a month.


3. Pro bono (Melbourne):
If you are interested in assisting the community with pro bono services, join our team. We are looking for people who can facilitate and manage our large volume of pro bono requests.
The work involves:
• working with the pro bono team to assess new project requests
• communicating with clients, organising the match between client and service provider
• updating the project information on the website.

Note: this volunteer position requires a commitment to attend one pro bono meeting per month and 3-4 hours per month to undertake the above tasks.

4. News team (anywhere in the world!):
Our website forum provides a space for discussing news that affect the built environment. This forum requires a team of members that can commit to contribute with one news and one comment per week—this is 4 news and 4 comments per month. This can be done all at once, one each week or in any way you want—this is entirely up to you.
This international team will focus on news discussing urban developments (the god, the bad and the ugly) of architectural, planning, urban, ecological, engineering, development… sort. Part of the objective is to bring to light all the important work done by local professionals, work that does not make it to ‘glossy magazines’.

Placing news in the forum is very easy and we will give instructions to ensure we comply with some simple norms. Depending on your area of interest, comments can be very short, or as long as you want. For an example of what we have donme in the past polease refer to the website under ‘forum’.

Our forum (http://www.architectsforpeace.org/news0.html) has the following headings and you can contribute to any of those. Note that under the ‘urban world’ you can place news in English or any other language.

After two months of ongoing contribution (8 news + 8 comments), your name will be added to our new ‘news team’ and your name will be listed on the website and linked to your arch-peace profile (see sample: http://www.architectsforpeace.org/profiles/beatriz.html ). We will set up a ‘news team’ group in which we can discuss any issue or question you have.

The position involves:
• Adding 4 news per months
• Adding 4 comments per month
• Participating in the ‘news team’ group discussion.

Note: this volunteer position requires a commitment of 2-3 hours per month.

5. Representative in your city or country (anywhere in the world!):
We would welcome members who would like to become arch-peace representatives. This role can only be defined by the local possibilities in your city/country. However, a good starting point is to create your own internet presence as arch-peace (please refer to http://archpeace.blogspot.com/2008/02/world-filled-with-peace.html for an example). Organising discussions around topical urban issues is also a good first step. Please send us your CV and we will get in touch with you as soon as possible.

On going discussions and campaigns

6. Indigenous issues (anywhere in Australia):
In the past, Architects for Peace has provided a platform for discussing issue of land right and housing for aboriginal communities. We hope that the ‘apology’ will bring a new era in the relationship between aborigines and non-indigenous people in Australia. This step should be accompanied by new collaborations and we believe that arch-peace can play an important role in promoting the discussion and contribution to the next stage.

Unfortunately and because of our small group of core members, our work in this area has not had the continuity needed to make it effective.

We are looking for a member that can take this work to the next level. A member with good knowledge of aboriginal issues in the area of the built environment and who would like to pursue this work further. The member’s interest can be in either research or a practical approach to the improvement of aboriginal living conditions and opportunities and who can communicate these to arch-peace.

This work requires a member who is self motivated and who can organise an arch-peace team around these issues, who can initiate campaigns, write and/or assist others to produce news or articles and who can keep the arch-peace membership up-to-date on this work.

Note: this volunteer position requires a commitment of approximately 4-5 hours per month.


7. Public transport or collective forms of transport (anywhere in Australia and other countries/cities facing similar issue):
Architects for Peace has been pro-active in undertaking the issue of public transport as one of the core problems facing our cities today. Last year arch-peace focused its annual forum around this issue Transported. For transported we had the participation of experts from all areas affected by public transport—from social, political and economic to the fields of urban design and infrastructure. This work has continued and just last Sunday we had the opportunity to present at the Sustainable Living Festival in Melbourne on arch-peace’s views of public transport, (find article o the website under arch-peace news).
Transported is also an ongoing issue that needs to be taken seriously if we are to reduce our contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and the quality of our cities (particularly its periphery).

We are looking for a member who has interest in the topic of public transport and who can oversee the continuity of our work, organise presentations and discussions, liaise with other organisations with the aim of effectively promote public transport among our authorities. This work requires a member who knows about transport issues and who is motivated by this issue. It requires very good interpersonal skills, good communication skills, self motivated, able to form an arch-peace team to work and assist with the work.

Note: this volunteer position requires a commitment of approximately 4-5 hours per month.


To apply please send us an email with your CV and the name of the position applying for to “arch-peace at architectsforpeace dot org”.

Please copy and paste the following on your email:

I would like to join the arch-peace team,
• Name:
• Gender: male/female
• Address:
• Telephone number:
• Country:
• Your profession/area of study:
• Position applying for:
• Your interests and/or previous experience (only if relevant to the position)