The War on Poverty Campaign is led by the Presidency and seeks to intervene and address the plight of indigent households. This will see the President, Deputy President and other members of the Executive teaming of with the Premier and Members of the Executive Council to visit households mostly affected by poverty and working with them to find short, medium and long term solutions. The programme also seeks to ensure that society (civil society, business, non-government organizations, community-based organizations) joins in the anti-poverty effort. The Free State pilot site for the War on Poverty campaign is Jacobsdal.
The goals and objectives include the following;
- Developing and deepening a coherent shared vision of poverty alleviation defined within the shared growth and development policy spectrum.
- Developing, implementing and reviewing policies, strategies and programmes for integrated poverty alleviation.
- Ensuring inclusive coordination, management and implementation of poverty alleviation initiatives with a wide spectrum of social partners.
- Providing and marshalling funding support and necessary resources to implement the poverty alleviation programmes.
- Promoting an entrenched sustainable community development.
- Linking grants to sustainable livelihoods and development.
- Increasing the potential of the vulnerable groups to engage in integrated, viable and self-reliant opportunities.
- Developing indicators for monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of poverty alleviation initiatives
The mandate of War on Poverty is to develop a database of households living in poverty through household profiling for accelerated interventions and linkages to development and employment opportunities.The programme’s approach is to profile households and communities to assess their strengths and needs. Referrals are then generated to the department or institution responsible for government services individuals within households and communities are eligible for but are not receiving. Linkages are also created with institutions or organizations that will further enable individuals or communities to control their destinies.
War on Poverty is therefore an opportune vehicle in attaining Millennium Development Goals to which South Africa is a signatory and in working toward Zero Hunger paradigm.In the Free State, WOP also links with the Operation Hlasela Campaign Framework, which is intended to consolidate all existing government programmes to ensure maximum impact. It focuses on mass mobilisation, service delivery intervention, collaboration and partnerships to fulfil the notion of “working together we can do more” and that is why we have been using Operation Hlasela is a vehicle for service delivery blitz.