The City’s Social Development and Early Childhood Development Department helped more than 900 individuals through its capacity building Women and Men for Change programme in the past 12 months.
The City’s Women for Change programme, now in its ninth year, creates employment opportunities through the City’s Expanded Public Works Programme(EPWP).
The majority of participants are tenants of City-owned rental stock units, trained and deployed throughout the city to help uplift areas where City-owned rental stock is situated.
The empowerment programme is developmental in nature and was created to capacitate women to play a more active and meaningful role in communities, while acquiring new skills and help with personal development.
The Women for Change programme aims to:
• Equip women with skills to implement community development programmes through training and mentoring
• Provide employment opportunities to unemployed women
• Create awareness of logging of C3 notifications for service delivery requests
• Provide support to individuals and families affected by substance abuse, Gender-based violence, sexual abuse and other social issues through awareness raising activities
• Provide safe passage for learners to and from school and implement truancy interventions
Participants in the programme were deployed across the city and placed at schools, clinics, libraries, early childhood development centres as well as NGOs where they had access to a number of training opportunities, including substance abuse, gender based violence, entrepreneurship, conflict resolution, and First Aid.
The aim of the Men’s programme is to:
• Reflect on culture, religion, traditions and the affect they have on relationships in a family and community.
• Assist individuals, organisations and institutions to formulate plans for change intervention
• Explore the inter-relatedness of substance abuse and violence against women and children.
• Contribute towards reducing the level of gender based violence
In addition, the Men’s programme encourages participants in their role as fathers on how to be positive role models for children and how they can contribute towards a healthy and safe community.
The two programmes created more than 900 opportunities in the last financial year, which ended in June, which included 653 opportunities through the Women for Change programme and 259 opportunities through the Men for Change programme.
The majority of participants are continuing as volunteers even though their EPWP contracts have ended. Others have been employed by their placement organisations.
‘The Women for Change programme has been a game changer for many participants, and the more recent Men’s programme is also making strides. These programmes are among the many social development interventions that target challenges within our social fabric, and where the impact isn’t necessarily evident overnight. By building stronger individuals, we will eventually have stronger and more resilient communities, which in turn contributes to other challenges like unemployment, substance abuse, violence and gangsterism. Participants in the programme are also ambassadors for the City as they often assist those in need and help with access to various social services. It is encouraging to see so many participants, and we hope to have an even wider reach in the next 12 months,’ said Mayoral Committee Member for Community Services and Health, Councillor Patricia van der Ross.
