More About UnIEP:
An important principle underlying everything that UnIEP does is that this
community is a part of the wider community - of the district, the province and
the country. And the wider community has responded: when the Western Cape Nature
Conservation Board talks about establishing conservancies in the region, one of
the organisations they talk to is UnIEP and when the Eden District Municipality
needs infrastructure built, one of the organisations on their tender list is
UnIEP and how is this achieved?
Well, this is an Integrated empowerment project and every aspect must mesh
with every other. So, for example, when a Community Kitchen is created,
opportunities are sought to turn it into something more - so it is contracted to
supply meals to home care patients and ideas are explored for using it as a
commercial catering contractor on a broader scale. In this way, incoming funds
are kept within the community and recirculated as often as possible so that the
people for whom they are intended really do benefit.
And in order to ensure the success of these individual
projects, UnIEP remains as small as possible: Permanent staff is restricted to 5
employees i.e. 1 project co-ordinator, 2 community development workers, 2 admin
officers. Most of the administrative functions are outsourced
to Comfiserve (Community Financial Services) - a business which was created out
of UnIEP and which now offers administrative and secretarial services on a
commercial basis.
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