Zenzele Development Organization is based on a Zulu word meaning “You can do it!”  We are a non-profit, membership-based woman - run organization established in 2007. Based in Toronto, Canada, Zenzele will empower African women by providing skills training, entrepreneurial development and business support to women residing in underdeveloped and poverty stricken countries in Africa.

OUR MISSION is to facilitate the collection and distribution of resources for the relief of poverty among African women and their families by working with selected grass-roots agencies in Africa. Our mission is based on a desire to bring hope, faith and self esteem where there is unemployment, poverty and despair. 

Zenzele arose from work done by the Board and volunteers of “South African Women for Women” SAWW over the last twelve years. During field visits to the schools and projects the organization was funding, several financial and resource needs became apparent. Our preliminary work with colleagues in the South African Teachers’ Union and faculty members in several South African universities, including Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, Natal in Durban, Western Cape in Cape Town, and Rhodes in Jamestown suggest that the provision of educational, health and social supports to get and keep young South African women out of poverty are at least as important as more direct strategies focusing on the provision of food and medicines; and we believe, will contribute to the sustainability of the more direct poverty reduction strategies in which some of local colleagues engage.

For the foreseeable future, we intend to restrict our activities to Southern Africa, and to the indirect poverty reduction activities most consistent with the capacities and interests of our members and volunteers, who are primarily professional women working in the health, educational and social services sectors in Ontario.

OUR VISION is to facilitate training, education and economic well-being for women living in marginalized circumstances in sub-Saharan Africa in collaboration. We believe that partnerships with Africa-based agencies and/or government entities will result in facilitating our mission to combat poverty and socio-economic exclusion.

• Reducing poverty amongst vulnerable women and children in the African countries where we work.
• Improving the quality of life through fundraising efforts in Canada.
• Alleviating the effects of unemployment and illiteracy.
• Literacy training for adult women and girls.
• Skill-building and economic opportunities for women.