The Chief Executive first announced the establishment of the $300 million Community Investment and Inclusion Fund (CIIF) in his 2001 Policy Address. The CIIF was set up to encourage mutual concern and aid, promote community participation and mobilise community resources through cross-sector collaboration that would contribute to building social capital and harmony.

Since its launch in August 2002, the CIIF has approved funding of over $70 million for 90 projects. These projects involve over 1 600 collaborating organisations, including schools and businesses and 70 of them are up and running. When fully implemented in three years, the projects will result in over 17 000 people who were previously service recipients being empowered to become volunteers and contributors (with some being re-engaged in employment); 200 mutual help networks and over 17 cooperatives being formed; 1 812 jobs being created; 3 500 jobs being matched; and over 300 000 people being helped.

Some of the new strategies are beginning to demonstrate positive results, with groups previously considered marginalised (such as the homeless, unemployed middle-aged people, disengaged youth, the elderly, newly arrived families, women and ethnic minorities) becoming more socially included and gainfully employed. As the Chief Executive said in his 2005-06 Policy Address, after three years in operation, the CIIF will continue to consolidate its early success in promoting social capital concepts, helping to break the cycles of disadvantage, encouraging tripartite partnership and creating the right conditions for social harmony.

The CIIF Evaluation Consortium, made up of seven research teams from five local universities, is jointly evaluating the overall impact, critical success factors and possible future development directions of the CIIF. Preliminary results on the critical success factors were presented to the Third CIIF Annual Forum-cum-Project Expo held on December 20, and the final evaluation reports are expected in 2006.