Collaboration at the core: SEN shortlisted for ICW 2025 awards

The Social Employment Network (SEN) has been recognised as an innovative collaborative model within the Social Employment Fund (SEF) by being shortlisted for the Institute for Collaborative Working (ICW) 2025 Awards. The London-based ICW award ceremony aims to celebrate outstanding collaborations in various sectors, recognising organisations and partnerships that demonstrate effective collaborative working. Under the category of collaborations led by NGOs, charities, or civil society organisations, this recognition affirms the SEN’s role in extending the impact of the SEF to more than a public employment programme. The SEN is a bold, globally relevant example of how public resources can be used to create employment and generate lasting social value when collaboration sits at the heart of programme design.

The Social Employment Fund won the Global Prosperity Catalyst Award at The Bay Urban Visionary Awards in Bilbao, Spain, in October 2024, recognising its work in transformation and community development.

The problem – and promise – of public employment programmes

The SEN has a unique role in convening diverse actors within the SEF. These actors often operate in silos so enabling them to collaborate effectively through shared learning, problem-solving, and trust-building deepens the overall impact of the SEF. Being shortlisted for the ICW award signals international validation of the model’s impact and its potential to inspire similar approaches elsewhere. It demonstrates that collaboration is not an optional extra in addressing complex social challenges but a necessity.

Public employment in South Africa forms part of the country’s wider active labour market strategies to address its deepening socio-economic crisis. In a setting where 32.9% official unemployment is the biggest driver of poverty, programmes like the SEF support community ecosystems where benefits to citizens are not only in actual jobs, but in communities positively affected. In this way, these programmes act as a form of social support that generate local economic opportunities that together safeguard people from economic and social hardship.

However, South Africa’s economy is in a complex state. Unemployment among South Africa’s young people (aged 15 – 34) has soared to 46.1%, with 62.4% of that joblessness sitting among 15 to 24-year-olds. At the same time, public finances are under severe strain: the budget deficit is projected at around 4.8% of GDP and high debt servicing costs consume roughly 22% of revenue, leaving limited fiscal space to expand social and economic programmes (OECD, 2025). In this constrained environment, public employment programmes are often criticised for being inefficient and fragmented, without structured collaboration, rigorous learning mechanisms or adaptive governance.  One solution that addresses this inefficiency and fragmentation is drawing on the resources and expertise of different government departments, civil society organisations and the private sector to strengthen public employment programmes.

A complex problem with a bi-directional solution

The Economic Development Partnership convenes the Social Employment Network (SEN) which extends and deepens the impact of the Social Employment Fund. By facilitating a learning and support network, the EDP ensures the SEN members learn from one another through knowledge exchange.

Within a complex context like this, distinct developmental environments must work in tandem: the authorising environment, characterised by regulatory processes within government; and the mobilising environment, encompassing entrepreneurs, activists, philanthropy, social movements, non-governmental organisations and research institutions, the space of active citizens and volunteerism. When these environments align effectively, they can yield collective impact by leveraging social capital at the grassroots level where cohesion and trust are most powerfully built. Getting these environments to work in tandem successfully is what makes the SEN model so effective.

The Economic Development Partnership (EDP) has successfully integrated these two environments by convening the SEN. The SEF’s primary purpose is to enable and support pathways to livelihoods and economic activities implemented by non-state actors through a focus on socially beneficial work. The SEF intends to stimulate the creation of paid part-time work opportunities that serve the common good by recognising and supporting work that civil society organisations (CSOs) and grassroots organisations are already doing and by expanding these programmes.

The SEN was conceptualised as a collaborative approach to maximise the impact of the SEF by embedding collaboration within implementation through a multi-stakeholder community of practice. The SEN weaves together civil society, communities and government implementers to shift from siloed implementation to a dynamic network where CSOs can co-create solutions to challenges facing implementation, share  successes and expertise, and inform adaptive governance in how the SEF is implemented. Through this, a genuine social compact is achieved: local actors are empowered to engage with the authorising environment, and the government actors can align interventions with needs within the mobilising environment.

Through the SEN, the EDP has cultivated the collaborative and adaptive capabilities of both the authorising and mobilising environments, nurtured relationships between these two environments as well as within the mobilising environment between implementing partners. This creates an adaptive governance model where responsibility and decision-making are shared. As the ability of these environments to adapt and work together grows, they become more effective partners, demonstrating how the learning and support network model of the SEN can drive long-term change.

Quiet and powerful learning and support: a recipe for hope

Being shortlisted for the ICW Award is a recognition of the quiet yet powerful role that learning and support networks have to play in achieving deep impact. The SEF programme has created over 2.2 million jobs in a country that desperately needs not only work but hope. By bringing together civil society organisations in a structured community of practice, the SEN strengthens collaboration, fosters trust and systematically captures and shares knowledge that makes the SEF work better. Importantly, the SEN provides government with real-time access to insights from frontline practice which fosters an adaptive approach to governance that bridges the authorising and mobilising environments. This dual role of supporting SIPs while informing government decision-making positions the SEN as a critical mechanism for turning fragmented efforts into collective impact through the SEF programme.

For further information, please contact Thula Zondi (SEN Campaign Manager) via email at info@wcedp.co.za.

Editing: Thula Zondi & Natalie Tannous

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