Grassroots Community Organising Around Unemployment
Launching a New Movement
A member induction, Langa branch, 4 Sep 2018
Launched on 13 August 2018, OfW uses grassroots community organising, campaigns and advocacy to alleviate unemployment. Our model is to organise communities in high unemployment areas to run their own branches that both support the unemployed in their search for work and endeavour to bring more work to the local area.
Our branches are open to the unemployed of ALL ages, educations, abilities and criminal records and act like free job centres to connect the unemployed directly to employers from where they live (always for free).
Harare (Khayeitsha) branch volunteers questioning their ward councillor, Anele Gabuza, about what he's doing to bring more work to the area, 12 Nov 2019
As a movement our goals are to increase the number of jobs in South Africa and the alleviation of the experience of being unemployed, including better treatment by employers and recruiters. South Africa has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the world and yet the voices of the unemployed are almost never heard in sites of planning like the Jobs Summit and Nedlac.
The Presidency's Response to our Movement
Our article in the Daily Maverick describing the 2020 State of Nation Address as having inadequate and underfunded ideas to combat the unemployment crisis received a response in the same publication from the private office of the President.
Working with Cape Town Together
We got behind the city-wide organising effort and five of our volunteers launched their area's community action network.
OfW played a role in formalising the partnering of neighbourhoods across the city, starting with Gugulethu and Sea Point. Read more in Pamela Silwana's piece on Daily Maverick.
Branches in High Unemployment Areas Run by Local Unemployed
Gugulethu branch volunteers helping the public, 4 Oct 2019
Our branches are all run by local unemployed volunteers. Members are encouraged to become more active job-seekers and to get involved in bringing more work to their local area. Read about our member tiers and incentives.
Wherever we open branches, we train local unemployed volunteers to staff them. Our aim is to organise community branches that are capacitated to find novel solutions in local conditions. At the same time, branches are supported centrally by sharing the experiences, successes and failures of other branches.
Because they are situated in City of Cape Town sites (predominantly libraries) and are volunteer run, branches operate at a next-to-zero monthly cost.
What Branches and Volunteers Do
Campaign planning session at Nyanga branch, 22 Jan 2020
Most members come to our branches because they are situated near their homes and because our tools can improve their chances of finding work. CVs they create on our website (with help from volunteers) are concise, well structured and have been honed by feedback from employers. Volunteers are trained to check member CVs and also to run our two main workshops: getting your CV to 100+ employers a week and dealing with hard interview situations.
Our branches are places where the unemployed can face the daily challenges of job-seeking together, making the search feel less solitary.
We have also started to work towards organising informal workers in their area in order to increase the amount of work done in high unemployment areas. Organising informal workers can help
- by representing the reputation of informal workers to the market
- through discount collective buying of equipment and other inputs
- with training and problem solving
- with the provision or obtaining of credit
- by working with local and national government to improve sites of trading, working conditions and to obtain other support
