Accompaniment Strategist

Building off the 20 years of experience in accompaniment ministry in Colombia and earlier experience in Palestine, the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship seeks our next Accompaniment Strategist. This role will serve the organization in five key ways:

• Engaging with key partner organizations
• Engaging and co-creating new accompaniment opportunities nationally and globally,
• Including weaving accompaniment strategies and skills throughout the issue areas of PPF (gun violence prevention, peace church / conscientious objection, and prison abolition)
• Partnering with key partner organizations, seeking, engaging, and supporting congregations as they transition from “mission trips” to engaging in accompaniment work. Increasing the capacity for Presbyterian congregations to show up in their faith.
• Manage and run our ongoing Colombia Accompaniment program by recruiting, training, sending, and supporting accompaniers in partnership with the Iglesia Presbiteriana de Colombia.

International and national travel required

• At this time, a 10 day delegation trip to Colombia is planned for February 2025.
• Additional travel to partner cites annually, to be planned with staff and volunteers based on partner community needs / requests.

Who We Are:

The Presbyterian Peace Fellowship is an independent, 501(c)3 corporation that works to end war and to promote nonviolent theory and action to respond to violence and conflict. The organization is largely run by volunteers with an Executive Director, Financial Administrator, Minister for Gun Violence Prevention, and Communications and Digital Organizing Manager. This will be a part-time (20 hours per week) position that reports to the Executive Director. The staff person works from home or wherever is convenient and is expected to take comp time when the position necessitates working more than 20 hours per week. The Accompaniment Strategist is not responsible for work-related travel expenses.

Who you are:

• Highly organized and an effective communicator both in writing and public speaking
• Someone who finds deep joy in cross-cultural collaboration
• Strategic thinker who sees possibilities and makes connections quickly
• Demonstrated commitment and framework for building anti-oppressive relationships
• Adept at working with volunteers, denominational leadership, and congregations
• Reliable, responsive, and collaboratively-oriented - we work as a team to solve problems across PPF. We all bring our skills and expertise, and we all work as generalists too.
• Passionate about peace and non-violence
• While we have no faith requirement to work with us, it’s important that you “speak Presbyterian” and have a positive frame of mind about the capacity of the church to effect positive social change
• Familiarity with the Accompaniment framework
• Bi-lingual Spanish / English and / or Arabic / English

What you’ll be doing, in collaboration with the volunteer leaders and executive director of PPF:

• Creating a small team of people to evaluate potential accompaniment relationship communities, with a focus on strategic locations including the Mexico/ US border, Palestine and Colombia.
• Developing a plan for how to determine places that might be strategic for building relationships that could lead to accompaniment
• Visit strategic places, communities, and/or organizations to build on existing relationships where the model of accompaniment might be a useful strategy against oppression and violence (domestic and international)
• Recruit, train, aid in discernment, deploy, and provide pastoral support to volunteers who will serve as accompaniers in Colombia and new sites
• Support the PPF organizationally by:
  • Cultivate, consult, and support working groups on Accompaniment sites ◦Participate in weekly staff meetings by Zoom
  • Attend appropriate meetings (determined in consultation with the Executive Director) of the PPF Activist Council
  • Represent the program at various meetings and programs
  • Support the Executive Director and Development Committee with overall fundraising strategy and implementation of that strategy