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The Community Work Programme: potentials and problems
- Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa
- Transformation
- Volume 91, 2016
- pp. 157-177
- 10.1353/trn.2016.0022
- Article
- Additional Information
This article provides a detailed and critically reflective ‘insider’ account of the origins and development of a Community Work Programme as a public employment programme intervention. The article explores the significant potential of such a Community Work Programme to reduce unemployment and improve socio-economic livelihoods for programme participants, and its potential to model public/private alignment across sectors that complements what can be accomplished within the budgetary constraints of the central government alone. It also describes the challenges of programme implementation as a social policy intervention, arising in part from the difficulties of scaling up successful pilots to create a nationwide programme. The article demonstrates real achievements but also the difficulties of engagement with the state by non-profit organisations, and the difficulties of forging sustainable partnerships between communities and government around shared goals.