Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) is the UK’s leading organisation fighting antisemitism nationwide. We strive to hold politicians and political bodies to account on issues relating to antisemitism, ensuring that Britain retains its status as one of the safest countries in the world in which to live as a Jew.
Public attitudes towards discrimination including antisemitism are often shaped or led by government policy. When policy is excessively lenient, society’s bad actors can exploit the situation, engage in discriminatory behaviour, and influence others to share their often-dangerous views. Likewise, good legislation can act as a deterrent for some of the worst antisemitic behaviours; CAA sees the opportunity for numerous policy actions to shut down or discourage antisemitic activity.
CAA has established a Public Affairs Unit to ensure that issues of importance to the Jewish community are understood by policymakers, policy advisors and legislators.
As a volunteer Public Affairs Officer you will:
Volunteers in the Public Affairs Unit require a keen interest in and understanding of how policy is formed within the UK political system and the ability to compile and maintain simple databases.
Events monitoring: You will help to ensure that the Public Affairs Unit and other relevant teams within CAA are aware of forthcoming legislative movement so that timely preparations can be made that will be vital to our work. Though working remotely, volunteer Public Affairs Officers will be in regular contact with a wide range of CAA colleagues, ensuring that all are kept informed as to upcoming events that could prove useful to our ongoing outreach work and that our communications strategy is informed, considered and consistent with goings-on in the political sphere.
Policy prioritisation: The knowledge that you will gain from your monitoring of policymaking will prove invaluable when helping colleagues to focus on specific policy areas and relationships with certain individuals. Public Affairs Officers must have a working knowledge of British politics and how it relates to issues of concern to the British Jewish community. You will be in regular contact with colleagues from various CAA teams ensuring that all are kept informed as to relevant issues that appear in your research.
Research and record maintenance: Our ability to inform relevant actors in the political sphere as to the concerns of the British Jewish community and the measures necessary to keep the community safe requires up-to- date knowledge on political parties, MPs, peers, civil servants, political advisors and politically connected individuals. Public Affairs Officers must be able to conduct independent research in this area, produce and maintain useful and relevant records to inform our strategies and outreach activities.
Compiling and maintaining records and databases: You will be involved in building and maintaining a database of all MPs, peers and relevant civil servants and political advisers. The database will include records of our interactions with individual figures within the political sphere to ensure that our outreach efforts remain effective and consistent. This will be vital to our goals in ensuring that British government policy takes the views and concerns of the British Jewish community into account. Applicants need not be expert in IT or database management, but must merely have a basic to intermediate level of familiarity with regular office software, such as Excel.