Resourcing Women, Girls, and Children Rights Initiatives in Tanzania

As part of its Strategic Plan(SP) mandate to ensure that women, girls, children, women's rights organizations (WROs), grassroots groups, and movements are empowered and resourced, WFTT has awarded funding to more than 80 organisations .

The funding is aimed to facilitate implementation of various projects, while at the same time helping the beneficiaries to effectively carry out their work, shift power dynamics, and drive meaningful transformation.

The funded projects are being implemented across the regions of Arusha, Dar es Salaam, Dodoma, Kigoma, Kilimanjaro, Pwani, Mtwara, Mwanza, Ruvuma, Singida, Tanga, and Zanzibar.

The projects cover a wide range of thematic areas, including violence against women, girls, and children; women's political participation and leadership; economic justice and sustainability; environmental justice and gender; feminist research and documentation; sports, popular art, and culture; promotion of reproductive health rights; and movement building and strengthening.

Before issuing the grants, WFTT conducted Organizational Capacity Assessment (OCA) exercise for a few new organizations that had never received funding from them. The main objective of the exercise was for WFTT to have a better understanding of these organizations, familiarize with their work, assess their capacities, and determine the support they need to successfully implement their proposed projects.

During the OCA process, several gaps were identified, including limited understanding of the feminist approach and the intersectionality of issues and expected outcomes, lack of key guiding policies (particularly in child protection), insufficient knowledge in programming and advocacy, and challenges in institutional capacity such as inadequate working tools and limited financial management skills. Additionally, many organizations struggled to design interventions that could bring about transformative change in their communities.

Before the projects began, an orientation session was held for all new grantees to build their understanding of the processes and procedures related to project implementation, compliance issues and expected outcomes. The funded organizations have already started implementation in the respective areas

Every year, WFTT calls for proposals for the promotion of women, girls and children's rights in Tanzania. The applications fall under three categories of small, medium and large(strategic) windows.