The ZWRC was officially launched on the 10th of October 2008 by Ipswich MP Chris Mole.

Zimbabwe Women’s Resource Centre’s stakeholders supported the formation and launch of the centre and to name a few, there was the Refugee Council, Suffolk Constabulary, Inclusion Team, Connexions, Suffolk County Council, Young Suffolk and many others.

MP Chris Mole welcomed this initiative by women from African backgrounds and was particularly pleased with the apparent regional network of Zimbabwean women’s groups which was a good form of support.

The Zimbabwe Women’s Resource Centre aims to identify acknowledge and celebrate the role of African women in society and to seek more participation. The centre, although still very young, aims to establish a strong advocacy, pro-active and inclusive Resource Centre, especially for disadvantaged women and young people.

The resource centre’s other main emphasis to be a training ground for young people and student social workers. It will provide individuals an opportunity to develop self confidence, gain support to enter into further education that may have been missed out first time around and to achieve much valued skills needed to enhance career prospects.

The young people are being encouraged to register with the V-volunteering programme under Young Suffolk, enabling young people to volunteer.

The centre comprises a youth room, equipped with computers, television and internet access. This is a space where young people carry out their meetings, write CVs or just relax and play music. We still require more computers for this room and support with games for the young people.

For women, we offer counselling and advocacy roles, as well as sign posting to other services across the county. The library is slowly filling up with books, mainly from Southern Africa. An African Book Club is already meeting monthly and explores the various literatures available at the centre. The centre has a collection of Women's work from parts of Africa, research on gender inequalities and efforts being made to address them. There are also many best selling, awarding fiction novels.