About Us

“There will never be a new world order until women are a part of it.” Alice Paul

SCEME was established in 2010, with the dream of inspiring and mobilising communities to champion freedom, equality and justice across the Middle East and North Africa. Since the outset, SCEME has been committed to focusing its interventions most closely on inspiring and nurturing women and young people from the region’s under-supported refugee and migrant communities as well as other vulnerable or disadvantaged groups.

Led by a small but dedicated global team of volunteers, SCEME’s unique programmes support the organization to pursue three overarching objectives:

  1. To work with leaders and activists to increase transparency, accountability and enhance civil society’s capacity to foster and inspire positive social change
  2. To help put an end to gender based violence and protect the victims and survivors of abuse
  3. To develop high-quality, bespoke, educational programmes that inspire, nurture and build the confidence of our target communities

Human rights, freedom, equality and justice are at the heart of all we do. We work with contributors and partners from across the region to promote openness and cooperation and strive at all times to ask the right questions to enable us to work as part of communities to create real, lasting, social change. Central to the fulfilment of this ambition is developing partnerships with civil society organisations and community mobilisers to help enhance their capacity and support their own initiatives to thrive; thereby reaching many more women, young people, refugees and migrants and other communities across the Middle East and North Africa.