Njombe Usawa Women Association (NUWA) is a women's organisation working in rural Njombe region in Tanzania, aiming to build women’s capacity by raising HIV/AIDS awareness, providing care and treatment for HIV victims, and offering assistance for human and legal rights. image01NUWA mission is to empower rural women and local institutions by building their capacity to work effectively together to reduce the spread of HIV/AID spreading and to promote women’s rights to property ownership and inheritance.

NUWA was established in the year 2010 as a group of few women who saw the threat of women in Njombe of getting even more marginalized due to national and customary issues concerning the position of women in the society. 

The vision of NUWA is seing a free society where women have free and equal opportunities in participating to enhance social welfare.

NUWA recognizes that, women, youth and children as the most vulnerable victims of conflict, disaster and underdevelopment. Therefore, their primary focus is the woman, youth and the child. All their  work is designed to bring hope and a future to the women, youth and children of Tanzania.

Through an integrated community based development approach, NUWA build community capacity to meet the needs of women, youth and children in the areas of primary health, education, food security, water, and environmental protection, advocacy, human rights, culture, disaster management and income generation. The group of people that the organization targets are in rural and semi-urban areas of Njombe.

The Organisation’s overall development goal is to empower the poor and vulnerable mainly who are women, youth and children to acquire knowledge, education, skills, and information sharing and credit facilities for improving their socio-economic status.

The main purpose for its establishment therefore, is to educate, build capacity and raise awareness of women on entrepreneurship skills, Medicare, customary and legal affairs, women and human rights, raise women’s voices, as well as provide tangible help and support to those proved to need it.

Currently NUWA has managed to conduct several seminars and workshops with the motive of building women’s capacity on the respective areas and to encourage and help women HIV/AIDS victims in Njombe. Also, the association has managed to establish several women clubs for women to exchange ideas, help each other, simplify consultation, and ease the process of getting loans to support their entrepreneurship initiatives for income earning thus enhancing economic independence from men and interdependence among these women groups.

NUWA has identified the following areas that need immediate intervention in the next five years: Water and sanitation;  Human rights; Environment conservation including alternative energy; Promotion of Health; Micro finance/ Income generating Activities;  Education; Sustainable Agriculture

The ongoing projects of NUWA are Uwemba women Pig project (Community Empowerment on generating income in Uwemba) and Ramadhani poultry project (Community Empowerment on generating income in Ramadhani).

Challenges

As a new young organization of not more than a year, NUWA has been and is facing the following challenges while implementing its projects;

To read NUWA strategique Plan Paper, please click on the following link  NUWA Strategique Plan Paper

To find out more about NUWA organisation and how to help, please visit their website at www.nuwa.or.zt