Mail & Guardian reporter
A tripartite initiative Common Purpose to foster cross-sector collaboration among Johannesburg’s public, private and non-governmental sector service providers has been conducting workshops for the past 12 months with a bid to improve service delivery for the city.
This South African chapter programme is led by leading businessman Cyril Ramaphosa to bring together businesspeople, police, trade unionists, senior managers in the health sector and community leaders in a series of workshops to familiarise them with how the city works.
The programme’s aim is to help the next generation of leaders find ways of working together on issues that affect the city. Over several months participants are put through a programme that gives them a 360 briefing on the society in which they live and work.
The programme brings together talented and energetic people from diverse working backgrounds who would probably otherwise never meet.
It is educational because each programme day concentrates on one or more important aspect of life in the area and exposes the participants both to the real problems involved and to the individuals who have real responsibility for dealing with them.
Each Common Purpose programme starts with a two-day residential which gives participants the opportunity to work together for the first time. The format is designed to expose and break down personal and professional barriers and accelerate team-building, which is essential to the programme. The residential also helps participants focus on different parts of a community and how they need to interrelate.
This is followed by a series of intensive one-day programmes, each concentrating on core issues such as the economy, education, governance, planning, housing, crime and justice and the media.