The basics of a chapter

Chapters are all about local action. They're the missing link in making remote work local.‌ The basics of what we do is educate local leaders like you. Because these jobs are not on the main street, not advertised on local radio stations, and not on the biggest 'mainstream' jobs boards, our communities didn't know about them.

The fundamental challenge for all is that remote work is remote from our communities, so, as a very practical example, when Doist advertises a head of marketing, they do so on their own website and maybe one other jobs board like Remote Ok.‌

Unless we know where to look our communities never see these jobs, and can not apply. When you search jobs.ie for a location, they give you only the jobs physically there, not the work from home roles, and not the jobs listed on Remote Circle.‌

So you, the local leads, step in where traditional methods can't, or won't. With local meet-ups, talks, events, posters, social media posts, we can intercept the process and when remote jobs can be anywhere, they'll land with us.‌

Once a chapter lead is up to speed on all things remote work, they can do a host of activities that create and foster communities of remote workers locally.

By gathering all of the information like that contained in the Get Started Guide Patrick built, we can empower local leaders to make remote work local. Last November, we didn't know about many of these companies, they simply weren't visible where we lived. Now we can map out just the Irish ones!

Making it local means different things for different chapters - such is the nature of making it local. On Achill Island, that might mean integrating remote work as part of the live and work days. On Arranmore Island, that might mean just catching the younger generation who want to say, and telling them about remote work. In Castlebar, it might mean bringing together all of the remote workers currently working from their homes, not knowing about one another. In Tullamore, it might be convincing the ETB to develop a remote working course. In Boyle it might mean putting up posters letting people know that they can work remotely from there. In Ashford, it might be doing the talks to schools. And in Kinvara it might be all of the above.

To repeat, the premise is this: remote companies are location-less, so having them advertise jobs in our local communities is a model that doesn't fit the future of work. We bypass that by quipping local leaders with this information, so that our communities can live, work, and participate locally.

We ask that you run at least 3 activities per year just to keep the momentum up. If you can't, let us know and we'll release the chapter lead position so that someone else can take it up and continue the impact you have started.

From time to time, things get in the way. Meet-ups might be hard to kick off, bookings might fall through, you might get too busy. Grow Remote is a volunteer organisation led by volunteers - we get it. It should always be a fun and fulfilling thing that you do, not something that needs to be done. So let us know if you hit a stumbling block!