Heat Intervention Community Engagement Officer

Position Title: Heat Intervention Community Engagement Officer
Level: Mid-Level
Time Commitment: 4–6 hours per week
Duration: August–October 2026
Meeting Frequency: Weekly
Start Date: Immediate

About the Role

We are seeking a skilled Community Engagement Officer to support meaningful engagement with community partners and residents around climate and extreme-heat resilience.

The successful candidate will be responsible for helping design and facilitate collaborative consultation and co-design sessions, ensuring that community perspectives are captured effectively and translated into useful insights for the broader project team.

This role requires someone who is comfortable facilitating discussions involving multiple stakeholders, managing different perspectives, and creating an environment where participants feel heard and able to contribute.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and support community consultation and co-design sessions.
• Develop agendas, facilitation plans, discussion guides, and supporting materials.
• Facilitate workshops and stakeholder discussions effectively.
• Create inclusive and accessible engagement environments.
• Engage community organizations, partners, residents, and other stakeholders.
• Encourage meaningful participation from individuals with different experiences and perspectives.
• Navigate sensitive or high-stakes conversations professionally.
• Capture key themes, concerns, priorities, and recommendations emerging from sessions.
• Synthesize engagement findings into clear written summaries.
• Identify recurring themes and areas requiring further exploration.
• Work closely with research and data team members to connect community insights with quantitative and qualitative findings.
• Help refine engagement approaches based on participant feedback and lessons learned.
• Participate in weekly team meetings and contribute to ongoing planning.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• Experience in community engagement, stakeholder engagement, facilitation, consultation, public participation, or a related field.
• Demonstrated experience facilitating workshops or high-stakes stakeholder discussions.
• Strong understanding of community engagement principles and best practices.
• Ability to work effectively with diverse community stakeholders.
• Excellent verbal communication and active-listening skills.
• Strong facilitation, conflict-management, and group-dynamics skills.
• Ability to synthesize complex conversations into clear themes and actionable insights.
• Strong organizational and meeting-planning skills.
• Ability to work independently while collaborating effectively within a multidisciplinary team.
• Understanding of extreme heat, climate resilience, or heat-wave impacts in Toronto or other urban environments.

Assets

• Experience working with BIPOC, newcomer, low-income, senior, youth, or otherwise underserved communities.
• Experience in climate adaptation or environmental/community planning.
• Experience with participatory research or community-based research.
• Experience designing inclusive engagement methodologies.
• Experience with virtual and in-person facilitation.
• Knowledge of Toronto neighbourhoods, community networks, and municipal processes.
• Multilingual or cross-cultural engagement experience.

Ideal Candidate

This position would suit a community engagement professional, facilitator, social researcher, public participation specialist, urban planner, nonprofit professional, or community development practitioner with strong workshop facilitation skills.