About Us

Name of Organization

The full and registered name of this organization is “Women Empowerment Centre South Sudan”, abbreviated as “WECSS”.

The People

WECSS is a Woman-led National Non-Governmental Organization founded by young South Sudanese Women who are highly motivated and committed to contribute their knowledge, time, skills and focus all their energy on the development and empowerment of socially disadvantaged and vulnerable women and youth and excluded groups in South Sudan, by addressing poverty issues and gender discrimination. The founding members realized there is a need to reach the most vulnerable women and youth who are residing deeply in rural areas and have no access to better services due to unequal distribution of resources and gender inequality.

Type and Nature of Organization

Women Empowerment Centre South Sudan is a National Non-Governmental, Non-profit, Non-sectarian and Non-partisan organization working for social development and empowerment of vulnerable women and youth in the Republic of South Sudan. The organization specializes in delivery of peace dividends including Transitional justice (Human rights advocacy and peace building, democracy and rule of law), Food Security and Nutrition (FSN), Protection and Emergency Response, WASH and Health, Education and Capacity building to transform and build gender-balanced communities in South Sudan.

Year of Establishment

WECSS was established in Juba, through an Article of Association by it four founding members on 7th October 2017 and legally registered by South Sudan’s Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC) on 11th June, 2018, as national NGO mandated to carry out humanitarian and developmental activities in South Sudan.

Vision

We belief in a society that live with respect and dignity for women, girls and excluded groups and advance empowerment, gender equality and equity for sustainable development.

Mission

To empower women, girls, and excluded groups to be champions in harnessing their potential through life skills building to improve their livelihood and participate actively in sustainable development initiatives.

Competent Core Values

• Commitment: Ability to dedicate in hard works and efforts to complete organization task, principle or goals.
• Professionalism: We hire experts who adhere to set ethical standards of the organization.
• Empathy: ability to emotional understand the feeling of others
• Integrity: Consistent, genuine and honest in our beliefs and actions.
• Transparency and accountability: acceptance and willingness to take responsively for our action, choice and behaviors.

WECSS’ Broad Objectives

• To promote agriculture for sustainable food security and livelihood.
• To provide life skills training for women and youth to promote community transformation.
• To promote peace building and respect for human rights.
• To promotes community health through Health, WASH and Nutrition.
• To promote education for girl-child.
• To advocate and promotes access to social justices for the vulnerable groups.
• To advocate and lobby for women’s participation in politics and governance at all level of community.
• To carry out community awareness raising on GBV, HIV/AIDS and other pandemic diseases.
• To protect and promote rights of women and girls in community level.
• To promote social and economic empowerment of women and girls to enhances their voices in decision making in both family and community levels.
• To promote access to transitional justice, democracy and rule of law.

Legal Status

WECSS is a registered as a non-profit organization by South Sudan’s Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC) under “the Non-Governmental Organizations Act 2016 of the Government of the Republic of South Sudan, with registration number 1569.

Governance

WECSS is governed by its Board of Directors (BoDs). The Board is the key policy making and governance body of the organization and it works independently. It formulates and approves policies and organizational systems and evaluates the overall performance of WECSS on periodic basis. The Board of Directors consists of nine 9 members (6 females and 3 males) and is headed by its Chairperson. WECSS’ Board of Directors comprises of Women Rights Activists, Development professionals, intellectuals and academicians in different fields.

Management

WECSS is headed by its Executive Director (female) who is the formal head of the organization. The Executive Director reports to the Chairperson of the Board of Directors (BoDs) and is responsible for the overall management of the organization. The Executive Director is supported by the programs’ managers and team of coordinators from different sections of WECSS that jointly form the management structure.

Partners and Partnership

Partners are the heart-line of WECSS. WECSS refers “Partners” as to all those individuals, communities, organizations and departments which join hands for extending emergency and resilience interventions. Beneficiary community, the line departments, national and international donors, the state governments, and other key stake holders from civil society are the best examples of WECSS’s Partners. These partnerships help WECSS financially and technically to achieve its objectives and mission. Since its establishment on 11th June, 2018; WECSS has remained privileged in getting the opportunity to work with a number of diverse partners who not only extended financial support for various projects; but also, adequately build the capacity of the organization from different perspectives.
WECSS greatly values and acknowledges the support of its partners (WECSS Boards, SSUWC, Well-wishers, CARE, UNFAO, UNMISS Senior Women Protection Office and DI) who provided their great support to WECSS for its previous and current projects, Global affair Canada (GAC),BMZ Germany; and UNICEF’s Social behavioral change (SBC) program titled “Sustaining risk communication and community engagement through “Integrated Community Mobilization and Engagement to empower communities with lifesaving knowledge to improve healthy behaviors and practices in hard to reach areas of NBeG”

Memberships and Affiliations

WECSS believes that networking, collective efforts, sharing of knowledge, resources and information is a key to her success in empowering the most disadvantaged and vulnerable Women and Youth. Keeping this critical fact in mind; the organization joined all forums and networks which directly link to its mission and objectives. In this regard; WECSS is working with humanitarian and development networks operating at local and national levels in empowering vulnerable communities of South Sudan.

Experience Portfolio

WECSS uses the strategies such as active community participation/engagement, public-private partnerships with CSOs, NNGOs, FBOs, CBOS, INGOS, Government institutions and UN agencies, and capacity building for women and youth. Besides, it engages in promoting gender equality and addressing social injustices against the vulnerable groups since its inception in 2018. Hence, WECSS has its conceptual understanding and knowledge of the issues affecting the marginalized groups related to domestic violence rooted in cultural fabric.

Structure and Departments

WECSS has Board of Directors headed by it chairperson and the management level is headed by Executive Director who is the formal head of the organization. It has two main department consist of Operation and Support departments.

Operation Departments (Programmes)

• Gender justice and economic Empowerment
• Food Security and Nutrition
• Peace building and Human Rights
• WASH and Health(SRHH)
• Protection and emergency response
• Education and Capacity development

Support Departments

• Administration and Finance
• Human Resources and ICT
• Logistics and Procurement

Financial Portfolio

WECSS implements its projects with the grants or funding from various national and International Organizations. These grants are usually time-bound and for specific project designed for either emergency or resilience interventions. WECSS has learnt a lot while managing grants of diverse donors and has well developed financial management capability, system and format.

Approach and Strategies

WECSS strongly believes in true and active participation of all the key stakeholders particularly the local communities or programme beneficiaries. Fair efforts are taken to ensure that stakeholders participate and contribute at all the stages of interventions. As its strategy, WECSS particularly focuses to ensure that maximum participation of the beneficiaries wherever required and relevant that particularly have direct or indirect impacts in their lives. However, the overall approach of WECSS work also identifies gender sensitivities that are related to the program and strategically addresses them. The following are the key elements of WECSS programmes’ strategies and work approaches:

• Thematic partnerships
• Community participation
• Awareness raising and sensitization
• Capacity development through life skills trainings
• Coordination, dialogues and engagements
• Research and publications
• Networking and coalition building
• Advocacy and lobbying

Human Resources

WECSS has a core team of professionals from various academic backgrounds such as Management, Finances, Agriculture, law, and Human Resources. In addition, WECSS hires project consultants when required. WECSS would wish to engages volunteers and interns when need arises.

Review and Monitoring

Monitoring and evaluation of projects in WECSS is always important and priority matter. Although still a growing organization, there is a built in mechanism for review and monitoring of all the projects WECSS implements. The processes of review and monitoring help WECSS in achieving the project objectives in a smooth and timely manner. As the key mechanism of monitoring; the projects are monitored by the implementing agencies, coordinators and managers of the program within the WECSS management.

Accounts and Audits

WECSS maintains all its accounts on double entry system. WECSS has Financial and Accounting Policy Manual, Systems and Formats which help it in effective management of all its funds and maintaining a complete transparency in receipts and payments at all levels. WECSS gets its accounts (receipts and payments) audited internally and by the recognized chartered accountants’ firms on the completion of projects or by the end of each financial year.

WECSS’ website

WECSS has a website established since its inception in 2018, with the aim of updating the public about the organization operations. Efforts are in place to ensure that website contains all the relevant information of the organization, and easily accessible to the visitors and donors. The website improvement and updating is continuous and therefore the organization is trying to upload in the cyber space for maximum information possible. You can visit us on wecss.org

WECSS’S Partners

WECSS’s work in partnership and supports of its partners. These partners includes BMZ Germany in partnership with CARE on women peace and security, Global affair Canada (GAC) in partnership with CARE supporting women voices and leadership program, UNFAO(FSL), UNMISS(Conflict prevention and gender affairs, Search For Common Ground(promoting young women participation in decision making and peace building processes), and Democracy International (DI) on Girl child education, UNICEF on social behavioral change (SBC) across five (5)counties of Northern Bahr El Ghazal State and other Well-wishers, who provided their great supports to WECSS’s vision,