ABOUT WEECE
WHEN YOU SUPPORT A WOMAN, YOU SUPPORT THE WHOLE FAMILY
We help women in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania by providing different kinds of assistance. “Women Education and Economic Center” (WEECE) is a community-based, non-profit organization using an integrated approach to address the problems of poverty and discrimination. Our mission is to support marginalized women to achieve economic stability and gender equality.
Our Story
WEECE is a dynamic non-governmental, non-profit, non-religious and non-political organization that was established in 1999 by a group of 15 women from the Kilimanjaro region. The organization is situated along KCMC road about 0.5 km from KCMC Referral hospital.
The main objective was to improve gender equality and to raise the social economic status of local women through the provision of education on economic development projects, followed by and offering of micro-loans to fuel their initiative, thus uplifting their standard of living.
WEECE strives to provide members and women a community in the region with technical information on economic and business development, entrepreneurships, informational and training support in the areas covering social and human rights, legal advise and reconciliation of disagreements with partners.
Through this work, the organisation aims to raise consciousness on the issues women face in Tanzania and increase their self-confidence by giving them the ability to make decisions that will directly improve their productivity and quality of life.
WEECE is a abbreviation for Women's Education and Economic Centre.
Although women are often the primary producers in their families, Tanzanian society sets the expectation that they should get married young and live in their husband’s shadow. A woman is given responsibility over the home life, caring for their children, husband, and home. To combat this societal slight, we believe that we must provide practical education on the rights women and children have in Tanzania. This combined with the ability to engage in socio-economical activities to increasing purchasing power, allows Tanzanian women to emancipate.
In pre-colonial Tanzania, women had very little rights. They were not entitled to ownership, inheritance, or any form of financial equality. Thankfully, the government worked alongside several organizations to identify these gaps in equality and work towards rectifying them. At WEECE, we have been working extensively to rectify these issues at the ground level, by promoting a collaborative approach. That is allowing the women themselves to become the agents of change by helping them appreciate the importance of their role in society and the value they add to it.
WEECE is formally recognized as a community-based organization in the Kilimanjaro region, whose work aims to empower women and children through education and financial independence, thus minimizing gender discrimination that is prevalent throughout Tanzanian society.