Refugee Entrepreneurship Project Coordinator

Beautiful Day is a gourmet granola and ethnic foods company with a mission to help refugees connect to their community through business, job training, and community education.

As a 10-year-old social venture, we have integrated adult and youth job training and, most recently, a women’s entrepreneurship program into the daily production and business activities of a gourmet granola and food company. We’re rooted locally in our state with our kitchen, fulfillment center, and offices located in Providence. We have an active, adventurous board of directors, and a diverse team of 8 full-time and 10 part-time staff, plus contractors and interns. We run an e-commerce store, ship products across the country, participate in area farmers’ markets and events, demo at and deliver to local grocery stores. Most of our production team are former trainees who graduated from our program. For more information about our mission, vision, and products, visit our website at www.beautifuldayri.org.

Position Description:

We are seeking a Program Coordinator to take the lead role within a team of American-born and Afghan staff to organize and implement programming created to serve refugees who aspire to start their own food-related businesses. 

Our current program, reserved for recently-arrived Afghan women, is an early stage pilot guided by a broad set of goals: build trust, decrease isolation, and develop social capital while creating pathways to participation in the American economic systems through employment or entrepreneurship. Over the next two years we plan to broaden this pilot into a business incubation program that provides aspiring refugee food-entrepreneurs with the upskilling, opportunity access, mentoring, and the interactive hands-on support that they need.

Like all of our programs, this initiative is situated at the intersection of business, education, resettlement, and community organizing. This position would be an especially good fit for someone who is familiar with early stage food businesses but also loves teaching and wants to invest their energy in helping refugees build new lives in our community. The candidate should want to work in a very diverse, collaborative environment. As always, we expect to adapt the job to the right person’s strengths and interests. 

Responsibilities

• Coordinate the logistics for Beautiful Day’s curriculum to serve Afghan refugees who are exploring food-related entrepreneurship. 
• Co-facilitate weekly hands-on workshops in both classroom and commercial kitchen settings to teach basic food-business skills (e.g., catering, food production, private chef events).
• Help plan and then coordinate several experimental proof-of-concept money-making initiatives or events.
• Plan and coordinate guest presenters and field trips.
• Coach volunteers and visitors to participate effectively in the weekly sessions.  
• Assist with data collection, program tracking, and evaluation in Beautiful Day’s database (Salesforce).
• Work closely with the project team and supervisor to integrate ESL education into all production and training activities.
• Liaise and collaborate with Beautiful Day’s staff team, program partners, and other stakeholders to offer participants access to business resources, supports, higher level training, and career pathways.
• As our pilot period with Afghans concludes, help redesign the project curriculum to serve a much broader demographic of aspiring refugee entrepreneurs.

Skills and Experience

• Experience in starting or running a small business, department, or initiative (food-related strongly preferred, e.g., catering, restaurant, CPG)
• Some experience in program design, program leadership, or project management. Co-leading skills would be necessary
• Experience in teaching, training, mentoring, or business coaching
• Cross-cultural or intercultural communication skills; able to build trust and listen carefully
• Experience in networking, outreach, organizing collaborations
• Adept and excited about organizing people, details, and schedules
• Servesafe license (or plan to acquire it) required
• Flexible, strategic, creative, not afraid to make some mistakes, a genuine team player

• A demonstrated commitment to social justice, refugee resettlement, or immigration work

Benefits and other details:

• 40-hour/week. Schedule is very flexible but needs to accommodate needs of team members and program participants
• Limited benefits (no medical yet), 3+ weeks vacation, 11 paid holidays

Salary: $46,000-$49,000 depending on experience, hours per week, final job description

How to apply:

Send a letter/email with a resume to jobs@beautifuldayri.org with “Entrepreneurship” in the subject line. The letter is important. We’d like to have a good sense of your personality and motivations, and why you might thrive in a job like this. Tell us if you know someone who knows us.