Community Employment Innovation Project (CEIP) – Improving Skills, Networks, and Livelihoods Through Community-Based Work: Three-Year Impacts of CEIP

Authors:David Gyarmati Shawn de Raaf Claudia Nicholson Boris Palameta Taylor Shek-Wai Hui Melanie MacInnis

Can community-based employment help the unemployed develop their transferable skills and social capital? A major Canadian study released today by the Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC) reveals promising results in that respect. Improving skills, networks, and livelihoods through community-based work: Three-year impacts of the Community Employment Innovation Project presents interim results from the Community Employment Innovation Project (CEIP), a program designed to encourage the longer-term employability of participants while supporting local community development in regions of continuing high unemployment.

Based on data collected 40 months after the enrolment of participants, Improving skills, networks, and livelihoods through community-based work: Three-year impacts of the Community Employment Innovation Project shows that CEIP led to substantially higher rates of full-time employment, increased earnings; and reduced receipt of EI and IA benefits, all of which were sustained for the three years of program eligibility. Participants also reported improved well-being, with reductions in the extent and severity of poverty and hardship, and increased life satisfaction. At the same time, CEIP produced significant improvements in participants’ social capital in ways that may provide a bridge to future employment, and the program’s effects on transferable skills were also significant, resulting in a potentially more employable workforce.

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Project Details

Published: October 2007
Capability: Experimentation
Policy Area: Community Capacity, Employment - Employment Supports and Services
Population: General Population - Communities and Families - EI Recipients
Type: Report, Executive summary