Changing South Africa’s public employment narrative to catalyse change: the impact of the Social Employment Network

South Africa’s unemployment crisis is deeply complex. While solutions exist, they often fail to scale nationally due to local nuances. Civil society organisations (CSOs) play a crucial role in bridging this gap, providing essential services while creating job opportunities. However, operating within resource-limited settings presents challenges. This case study explores how a learning network and community of practice helps reduce unemployment through socially impactful work.

Reducing unemployment through work for the common good

The Presidential Employment Stimulus, launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, expanded public employment programmes to beyond 2020. One of these key interventions is the Social Employment Fund (SEF), which fosters partnerships between government and civil society organisations (CSOs) to create employment opportunities within local communities. However, questions arise: how do CSOs avoid duplication? How can they scale impact? The answer to those questions is found in the Social Employment Network (SEN), a community of practice that fosters collaboration between, enhances capacity of, and facilitates knowledge-sharing among CSOs.

What is the Social Employment Network?

The SEN connects nearly 40 CSOs participating in the SEF, repositioning them as strategic implementing partners (SIPs) in addressing unemployment. Acting as a neutral intermediary, the Economic Development Partnership (EDP) provides the strategic framework for the SEN, fosters collaboration among the SIPs, and strengthens stakeholder relationships between SIPs and the funder. By facilitating learning and engagement, the SEN amplifies the SEF’s impact as a public employment initiative.

Through the SEN, CSOs shift from being service providers to becoming key partners in development efforts. This transformation is essential, as it allows CSOs to build stronger networks, share resources and co-develop solutions tailored to the communities they serve. By engaging in knowledge exchange, SIPs are equipped to better implement the SEF effectively.

How does the SEN work?

The SEF leverages existing CSOs addressing development needs on the ground. As a community of practice and learning network, the SEN bridges the gap between bottom-up mobilisation and top-down governance, ensuring meaningful collaboration. Two key principles guide how the SEN works:

• Development work, across all community spheres like education, agriculture and greening, can drive employment solutions to reduce unemployment
• While CSOs may lack time for partnerships and training, they are committed to peer learning to enhance programme delivery

Through regular curated engagements, the SEN fosters trust, collaboration and open communication between SIPs. SIPS use the space created by the SEN to tailor engagement sessions to their needs.

In addition, in-person sessions further strengthen SIP networks and encourage deeper collaboration. These meetings provide SIPs with an opportunity to share best practices, discuss challenges and explore new ways to scale their respective impact. By creating a safe space for honest discussions, the EDP facilitates feedback loops between SIPs and the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), ensuring responsive programme adaptation. Peer-led working groups empower SIPs to drive knowledge exchange and are supported by EDP facilitation. Two examples demonstrate how the SEN is allowing CSOs to redefine what impact really looks like.

Enhancing programmatic monitoring and evaluation (M&E)

The SEN played a pivotal role in refining the SEF’s M&E framework. Initially, the SIPs struggled to provide the impact data sought by the IDC. Working through the SEN, the SIPs co-created a bottom-up M&E framework that was effective in collecting meaningful impact data, tailored to their on-the-ground realities. This framework, now formalised into an online reporting system, enables better tracking of the SEF’s outcomes and ensures that the IDC can report relevant and reality-based impact data.

This shift in M&E processes was a crucial win for the SEN. It allowed for real-time tracking of programme outcomes by capturing both quantitative and qualitative data. In this way, the SIPs can provide a more comprehensive picture of the SEF’s impact in the communities in which they work. The new reporting system has streamlined data collection, reduced administrative burdens and improved overall programme efficiency.

Telling the bigger story of impact beyond numbers

Unemployment metrics often focus on job placements, overlooking the broader social value created for individuals and communities through those placements. A SIP-led working group focuses on benchmarking the social value outcomes of work being done by the SIPs through the SEF. The SIPs have developed a pilot programme that analyses their monitoring data to estimate the impact of purpose-driven activities. This programme will assess the hidden value of activities by considering multiple dimensions. This will allow the IDC to highlight the social value of public employment programmes and the employment they create at a much deeper level than simply through numbers. It will quantify the social value of work for the common good. The efforts of this working group will see the integration of research data into impact storytelling, which the SEN is hoping will shift the public narrative about public employment programmes.

Margo Paterson, SEN project lead at the EDP, emphasises the significance of these initiatives within the SEN:

Shifting the narrative about public employment programmes

The work of enabling the SEN to engage in impact storytelling is the key focus of the SEN campaign manager, Sivu Siwisa. Through workshops, storytelling training and digital campaigns, the SEN equips SIPs to tell more compelling stories about their work. The collective impact is a shift in how public employment is perceived.

The negative perception of public employment programmes is a major challenge facing all SEF participants. But by showcasing their impact, the SIPs are able to attract resources, strengthen their credibility and position CSOs as vital partners for government and business in reducing unemployment.

The learning component of the SEN works to capture these valuable insights about CSO-driven employment solutions in a digital knowledge repository. Here, best practices to sustain and scale the impact of the SEF are shared to encourage adaptation and replication.

Case in point: The Learning Trust (TLT)

In 2021, TLT launched the After School Catch-up Coalition to address pandemic-related learning disruptions. Leveraging SEF funding, the coalition created jobs for young teaching assistants while improving education outcomes. Since inception the Learning Trust has seen:

• Over 10,000 young people have been employed
• More than 180,000 learners have received after school care
• 50% of participants transitioned to permanent jobs with 44% pursuing further studies

Jonathan Green, a childcare worker in one the programme, describes his experience: “It’s not just about maintaining a building, but maintaining hope for these children.”

This initiative highlights the dual benefits of SEF participation—economic empowerment and social transformation. By embedding employment within essential services, CSOs create sustainable opportunities that extend beyond short-term job creation.

Looking ahead

Expanding the SEF’s reach requires ongoing innovation and partnering that creates work for the common good. Moving forward, the SEN aims to strengthen collaboration with government and private sector stakeholders, expand regional engagement sessions to enhance local collaboration and develop additional training programmes to build SIP’s capacity.

So the SEN plans to continue to convene space where distinct and diverse CSOs can learn from each other. Space where these perspectives can be shared with the authorising environment. Space where experimentation and innovation can blossom into action. Space where partnering can create work for the common good.