WFT Trust is the first National feminist Women’s Fund in the country and the only funding support mechanism.
WFT-Trust As A Feminist Fund Thus Plays A Vital Role Towards Women’s Rights And Empowerment.
As Tanzania’s first and only women’s rights fund, our overall goal is to contribute towards women’s rights and empowerment, and to women’s and feminist movement building through implementing a functional and empowering funding mechanism for women in Tanzania.
SDG's Goals
No Property
End poverty through sustainable growth,
job creation and social protection
No Property
End poverty through sustainable growth,
job creation and social protection
No Property
End poverty through sustainable growth,
job creation and social protection
No Property
End poverty through sustainable growth,
job creation and social protection
Our Vision
To contribute to the building of a strong women’s movement in Tanzania through making grants, strengthening women’s capacity, building strategic alliances and mobilizing resources.
Our Mission
To see a Tanzanian society where women realize their full potential and engage fully in the transformation of their communities in order to achieve empowerment and social justice.
FEMINISM
OUR FEMINIST PRINCIPLES AND APPROACHES
As a feminist women’s fund, we aim to support, and build capacities and organize the power of Tanzanian actors of the women’s movement to commit to advancing a feminist agenda that advances the rights and dignity of women, girls, and children. As a consciously feminist fund, we understand our mandate is based on feminist principles that have always guided and will continue to guide our ways of working:
HOW WE DEFINE FEMINISM
As articulated in the Charter of Feminist Principles for African Feminists
Feminism is the struggle against patriarchal power. Our ideological task is to understand patriarchy as a system of male authority, which legitimizes the oppression of women through political, social, cultural, and religious institutions. Our political task is to end it by challenging other systems and structures of oppression and exploitation, which frequently mutually support each other. We are also part of a global feminist movement against patriarchal oppression in all its manifestations. Our focus is fighting against patriarchy as a system rather than fighting individual men or women. Therefore, we define our work as investing individual, collective, and institutional energies in the struggle against all forms of patriarchal oppression and exploitation
1
Applying feminist principles based on trust, accountability & mutual respect to all of our relationships and areas of work.
2
Nurturing and providing support to women, particularly at the local level to increase their voice, visibility and impact.
3
Modeling inclusion and a rights-based approach in ensuring women and groups from the margins of the movement (e.g., LGBTQI individuals, sex workers, women with disabilities etc.) are central to all areas of our work, with intersectional, intergenerational, and inclusiveness frame.
4
Prioritizing funding, capacity strengthening and mentoring processes for undeserved and marginalized, and rural and remote women’s groups and organizations.
5
Playing a pivotal role in ensuring that feminist and women’s rights issues are well articulated and advocated in Tanzanian development structures and processes.
Our History
A GLIMPSE OF WFT-T HERSTORY
2007
2007
WFT Trust was initiated by two visionary women who responded to the increased needs of WROs, and women’s rights movement actors in accessing funding towards accelerating their work, making them visible and voice their issues, and to a transformed society. WFT’s founders Mary and Marije realised that women‘s voice, visibility and contributions to achieve empowerment and social justice remain unseen and undervalued unless adequate funding reaches them. This has always been their driving force in pushing for and achieving the impossible.
2007
WFT Trust was initiated by two visionary women who responded to the increased needs of WROs, and women’s rights movement actors in accessing funding towards accelerating their work, making them visible and voice their issues, and to a transformed society. WFT’s founders Mary and Marije realised that women‘s voice, visibility and contributions to achieve empowerment and social justice remain unseen and undervalued unless adequate funding reaches them. This has always been their driving force in pushing for and achieving the impossible.
2007
WFT Trust was initiated by two visionary women who responded to the increased needs of WROs, and women’s rights movement actors in accessing funding towards accelerating their work, making them visible and voice their issues, and to a transformed society. WFT’s founders Mary and Marije realised that women‘s voice, visibility and contributions to achieve empowerment and social justice remain unseen and undervalued unless adequate funding reaches them. This has always been their driving force in pushing for and achieving the impossible.
A WORD FROM OUR FOUNDERS
TO OUR FRIENDS, SISTERS, PARTNERS, ALLIES AND SUPPORTERS
Mary Rusimbi
Board Member & Founder
The Registered Trustees of Women Fund Tanzania (WFT Trust) believe that there is tremendous power when women, girls, children, and other social groups work together; a profound sense of community, empowerment, and support. WFT Trust is convinced that the immense power of the women’s and other social movements, including children’s rights movement, arises from investing in enabling strategies, which include combining engagement platforms, experiences, and collaborative processes that harness the insights, knowledge, skills and application of the feminist agenda, ingenuity of women rights organizations, feminist movements, young girls and children’s rights movements, individuals, groups and activists working in different settings in the country.
Ms. Marije te Riele
Board Member & Founder
Our main focus is to resource grassroots Women’s Rights Organizations (WROs) and movements, especially at the local level, because we believe that they are the experts of their own realities and have incredible organizing power, voice, innovative leadership, and agency to transform the dis-empowering contexts they live in to realize their full potential and rights as human beings. WFT Trust believes in and invests in harnessing the immense power of the feminist women’s movement(s) that arises from combining engagement platforms, experiences, and collaborative processes that harness the insights, knowledge, skills, and ingenuity of organizations, groups, individuals and activists working in Tanzania.