The Jobs Fund
The Jobs Fund supports innovative initiatives and approaches to job creation. The Fund offers once-off grants in the areas of enterprise development, infrastructure, support for work seekers and institutional capacity building.
The Jobs Fund was established in 2011 and operates on challenge fund principles. The Fund issues open calls for proposals and considers proposals from the public sector including municipalities and government departments and the private sector and not-for-profit organisations that can contribute towards achieving systemic impact on job creation and poverty reduction.
About
Over the past nine years, the Jobs Fund has demonstrated that it is possible for the private and public sectors, as well as civil society organisations to collaborate, share risk and achieve greater social impact by implementing innovative models for job creation and thereby catalysing broader economic participation and inclusion.
After eight funding rounds, the Jobs Fund has contracted R8.5 billion to a portfolio of 146 projects. These projects will potentially leverage an additional R13.3 billion from our partners to create 259,250 permanent jobs, 56,930 short term jobs, 26,695 internships and train 306,702 beneficiaries by 2025.
Visit the Jobs Fund website for more information.
To read the latest Jobs Fund news and to download their newsletters click here.
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Project in the spotlight
South Africans from the most marginalised backgrounds rarely get the chance to come into contact with potential employers. There are multiple reasons for this: the social and geographic legacy of apartheid, the poor quality of schooling, high cost of transport, limited skills and experience. Experience is the determining factor in how likely a person is to gain formal employment, locking out millions of youth caught in the vicious cycle of not having experience and not being able to access it.
Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator helps thousands of young South Africans to get and keep their first job, in a way that simultaneously addresses the needs of employers and employees. Through extensive consultation with employers around their recruitment needs and challenges faced in hiring young people, Harambee has structured a rigorous bridging programme that directly addresses these needs and offers employers the option of tapping into all or parts of the value chain.
Driven by its social impact objective, Harambee recruits South African work-seekers between the ages of 18 and 34 from marginalised communities, who have at least completed Grade 10 and are not studying full time.
