Background

Youth Service within Community Development is a two year intervention within a community and is one of the strategic areas the Joint Enrichment will be focusing its work in. This strategic area aims to locate youth develop within broader community development.

Broad Strategy

The JEP believes that young people needs to be more central to the reconstruction and development of their communities, country and its people. Recent history shows us that young people in South Africa possess the commitment, courage and the gifts to make their contribution to their lives, their communities and the country at large. Young people have been and can again be "agents for change".

The JEP believes that young people should be central to their own development and that communities and broader society have a fundemental role to play in supporting young people to realise this. In this regard "youth service within community development" is an attempt to ensure the centrality of youth and place their needs squarely within the context of community development needs.

This strategic area will require JEP to work in a community for 24 months. The interventions will include youth service sites, capacity building of community partners and advocacy.

The programme will include the historically marginalised young people who are:

• ages 18-35 years and will strive to work with specific age cohorts (eg. 18-25 and 25-30 yrs.) Recognising that the needs of within this age range are very diverse;

• out of school and out of work for two years and more;

• in conflict with the law or at risk of engaging in criminal activity; and the JEP recognises that young women are still one of the most marginalised groups of our society. The Youth Service Programme will work with groups of young women only, as work in our Young Womens Network indicates that young women peform better in the abscence of young men and the related issues they present. The programme will aim to build young women as key resources for their community and integrate them more broadly into community activity from which they may have been excluded.