Zivai Community Empowerment Trust (ZCET) was established in 2015, by women and youth activists in Zimbabwe who felt side-lined in economic decisions that involved their communities.
In the mining industry, ZCET mobilised local people to come together and face the challenges which included a lack of access to mining rights, limited advocacy skills and lack of information. The main purpose was to give communities a voice and an engagement platform for those negatively affected due to the lack of transparency and accountability by governmental and mining authorities.
ZCET also noticed that communities were lacking knowledge in environmental management and capacity building programmes. As a response, they engaged other organisations to facilitate the introduction of training sessions. The organisation brought together youth groups to clean up and protect the environment as mining companies littered during their activities.
Today, ZCET engages in capacity building for women and youth. Those capacities are focused in numerous areas including human rights, peacebuilding and education. The organisation's strategic focus remains on natural resources rights awareness and advocacy, sustainable peacebuilding activities, mitigation strategies on the impact of the extractive projects, environmental awareness, sustainable resource governance and climate change mitigation strategies.