The Community Work Programme

The Community Work programme is a partnership between the Special Projects Unit of the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP), the Integrated Development Directorate of the Department for Social Development (DSD) and the Youth Desk in the Presidency. These partners are tasked, in different ways, with contributing to ‘scaling-up' forms of public works, special employment programmes or publically funded employment, and came together to explore approaches to this in the social sector. A range of related issues is also investigated, such as whether there are advantages to developing a minimum-employment guarantee based on weekly or predictable, regular work; how such an approach might be operationalised in the South African context and in ways that complement the community development and community-driven approaches being explored by DSD; and what is the scope to integrate social tasks into the ‘work' allocated, such as providing additional support to child-headed households.

The Community Work Programme is project managed by the Second Economy Strategy Project, located at Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS).