Community Food Shop Saturday Supervisor

Sutton Community Works (SCW) is a Christian charity in South London. Our vision is for our faith in action projects to contribute to a safe and flourishing community in Sutton.

Our work focuses on areas including food poverty, young people, rough sleepers and homelessness. In all our work, our ethos is to love God and others in all we do and say, ensuring people feel seen, heard, understood, and helped.

The Community Food Shop enables Sutton residents who are living with food insecurity to have weekly access to healthy and helpful food, with around 110 households visiting each week.

People visiting the shop come from a vast variety of backgrounds but all have faced difficult life experiences. Beyond food, we also want people to access support to improve their situation, so we pay Citizens Advice to come to the shop every week and provide advice on topics such as housing, debt and benefits.

And as a Christian project we underpin everything with prayer and actively offer prayer to our customers too. The community is real at the Food Shop, and the genuine care and compassion that our 40+ volunteers offer keeps people coming back and building trusting relationships with us.

As one customer said: "Thank you to all the volunteers for their love and support. Being able to feed my family with help from the Food Shop has changed my life."

As the Community Food Shop Saturday Supervisor, you can use your people skills, organised nature and attention to detail to help feed people in need and provide a safe and welcoming environment. You will:

• Lead sessions in the shop, serving and praying with customers and supervising and praying with volunteers (40%)
• Ensure a safe and clean environment and equipment to comply with hygiene standards (40%)
• Ensure food is stored and handled safely to minimise waste (10%)
• Ensure everything is prepared for the Food Shop sessions to run smoothly the following week (10%)
• Keep Christ central to activities in the Food Shop project (always)

Will you come and join this amazing project?!

Salary: £27,000 per annum pro rata (plus 5% pension commencing from successful completion of probation period).

Hours: 7.5 per week

Working Pattern as below (with occasional working outside of these times).

Saturday 9:00am 5:00pm

Roughly once per month, the finish time will instead be 2:30pm and the remaining 2.5 hours will be worked on a Monday morning (9:30-12) to join staff meetings.

In addition, if agreed with the Food Shop Manager, it is possible for some Saturday afternoon tasks to be completed on Mondays or Tuesdays instead.

Annual Leave: 20 days plus bank holidays per annum, pro rata

Location: This role is based at the Community Food Shop in the St Nicholas Centre in Sutton (SM1 1AY), with occasional travel to the office (Highfield Hall, 320 Carshalton Road, SM5 3QB).

Occupational Requirement: This role involves offering and participating in Christian prayer with members of the public and volunteers, leading devotions and group prayer, and providing pastoral care and supervision to volunteers. It is therefore an occupational requirement for the post-holder to be a practicing Christian.

We are looking for someone who:

• Shares the Vision, Values and Ethos of Sutton Community Works (see our accompanying Who We Are document)
• Cares deeply for those in need and wants to put their Christian faith into action to serve them through addressing food insecurity
• Is hardworking and thorough when completing tasks
• Has experience with volunteers and supervising/leading or coaching others
• Has experience supporting people who are vulnerable or have complex social backgrounds
• Is confident and trustworthy in working independently
• Is comfortable with physically demanding work and spending a lot of time on their feet
• Is comfortable using electronic systems and devices
• Is highly organised and has excellent attention to detail
• Has excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• Has some understanding of safeguarding, confidentiality and health and safety (training can be provided)

Please note aforementioned occupational requirement.

Closing date: 30th March 2025

For fuller job description and tasks involved, please download the document 'Community Food Shop Saturday Supervisor - March 2025'.

In your covering letter, please explain why you think you could be the person we are looking for, based on the information provided.

Not quite the right role for you? We are recruiting other roles in this project too - see our Organisation Profile for all current vacancies.