Taejai COVID-19 Sandbox: Community Employment

COVID-19 situation has a severe effect not only to the health and well-being of our citizens, but also an adverse impact on the livelihood of underprivileged populations. A large group of people, especially daily wage earners, lose their jobs after the lockdown measure has been implemented. With no or less income and having to live under the social distancing condition, many households become significantly vulnerable. 

Currently, there are a few projects on TaejaiDotcom that provides immediate support in term of food and basic hygiene to the vulnerable populations in different geographic and demographic groups in Thailand. It is important and timely to quickly respond to their needs, especially in time of crisis. However, we realize that in the medium term, they need monetary income such that they can allocate the resources in such a way that best fit with their households’ priorities.

We recognize that one of the best ways to give them financial support is to give them job opportunities. First, it is a legitimate way of giving someone money. Jobs also help them maintain their dignity and give them a chance to learn and be a productive workforce.

Therefore, this project is the first in Taejai COVID-19 Sandbox series to test the idea of community employment. The Community Employment (CE) is designed to help people who become unemployed and significantly underemployed due to the COVID-19 breakout to get back to work by offering part-time and temporary placements in jobs based within local communities. In the coming week, we will work with our local partners who act as community employers and hire local residents to work on different tasks that exist in the community and comply with social distancing practice. Since each person has different academic training (if any), skill and work experience, the jobs that suit them could look very different from person to person. We plan to experiment with as many tasks/jobs as possible in order to gain insight from this ad-hoc employment in term of workforce development as well as household and local economy. In this experimental week, we plan to create incomes for at least 200 vulnerable families in Bangkok (100 households), Pattani (50 households) and Yala (50 households).

We will first implement this pilot project in three communities, 

1. Khlongtoey in Bangkok – employment for 100 families, in partnership with Music Sharing (คลองเตยดีจัง) 
2. Pattani – employment for 50 families, in partnership with Baan Luuk Rieang,
3. Yala – employment for 50 families, in partnership with Baan Luuk Rieang