Girls in Zanzibar face a complex web of social and structural barriers that limit their potential from an early age. Poverty, gender inequality, and restrictive cultural norms leave many without access to empowering opportunities—from inclusive spaces to play, to education about health, rights, and leadership.
Too often, girls are discouraged from participating in sport, leadership, or decision-making, while stigma around menstruation further isolates them and undermines their confidence. For girls with disabilities, these challenges are even more severe: multiple layers of exclusion prevent them from fully participating in school, community life, or sport.
Women Empowerment Zanzibar (WEZA) offers a new pathway: safe spaces, sports, health education, and leadership for every girl. By creating inclusive spaces for girls of all abilities to participate in soccer and purposeful play, WEZA tackles these barriers directly—equipping them with life skills, knowledge of their rights, and the confidence to challenge harmful gender norms.
Soccer serves as the entry point, breaking taboos around girls in sport, while purposeful play transforms each session into a platform for education on issues such as health, gender equality, child rights, and GBV prevention.
Women Empowerment Zanzibar (WEZA) offers a new pathway: safe spaces, sports, health education, and leadership for every girl. By creating inclusive spaces for girls of all abilities to participate in soccer and purposeful play, WEZA tackles these barriers directly—equipping them with life skills, knowledge of their rights, and the confidence to challenge harmful gender norms.
Soccer serves as the entry point, breaking taboos around girls in sport, while purposeful play transforms each session into a platform for education on issues such as health, gender equality, child rights, and GBV prevention.
The Film
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Everywhere you look on the island of Zanzibar—in crowded city squares, in dusty fields by the roadside, and along its impossibly white beaches—you see the game of soccer being played. But it’s nearly always exclusively boys and young men.
Arriving at WEZA’s soccer pitch on the first day with our production team to shoot a film about this groundbreaking organization—it felt shocking—almost surreally beautiful—to see ONLY girls and young women playing the game. Even just being there for a few days, it was clear how much joy, confidence, and self-esteem these girls had. WEZA’s impact is epic and undeniable.
Arriving at WEZA’s soccer pitch on the first day with our production team to shoot a film about this groundbreaking organization—it felt shocking—almost surreally beautiful—to see ONLY girls and young women playing the game. Even just being there for a few days, it was clear how much joy, confidence, and self-esteem these girls had. WEZA’s impact is epic and undeniable.
KRF Production Team
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Since joining the WEZA Program, it has helped me make many new friends with whom I play football on the field, hang out together, drink tea together, and study together. I feel very safe.
My favorite thing is teaching my friends Sign Language–even if it’s just a little bit.
My favorite thing is teaching my friends Sign Language–even if it’s just a little bit.
Saada
WEZA Soccer Player
Keep The Work Going
The Kym Rapier Foundation is proud to support Women Empowerment Zanzibar. Your support helps this organization, and the work of other organizations like it, continue to make a real difference in communities around the world that need it most.