About Sheeac
Sheeac started with a friendship. Two women, one shared fire.
Ever since she was a child, Maaike has cared deeply about children's rights, gender and racial equality and women's empowerment. She always knew she would build something of her own one day. Years of travelling through Africa led her to the Gambia, the smiling coast of Africa, and she fell in love. She stayed with local families, lived in their homes for weeks, and saw two things up close: the warmth and rich culture of the people, and the challenges girls and women still face every day.
In early 2025, at the Kankurang Festival in Janjanbureh, Maaike bumped into an old friend she hadn't seen in two years. She told him about her lifelong dream: working on women's empowerment, together with someone who creates lasting change from within their own community. His answer changed everything: "You need to meet Aisha."
Aisha, from the Serekunda area, had already travelled to rural communities to see for herself how women in the Gambia live: little access to education, little say in their own lives, violence, FGM, period poverty and no safe places to turn to. With the little money she had, she had already started organising women's circles on her own. She had worked with several NGOs, spoke up fearlessly for girls, and was studying gender-based violence with a dream of building her own organisation.
Maaike felt it straight away: this is my person, someone I want to build with. One week later, back in Serekunda, the two of them wrote a constitution and officially registered Sheeac, She Empowerment and Awareness Circle, in Kanifing.
Back in Belgium, Maaike planned to set up a nonprofit to raise funds. Instead, she found Plan for Gambia. They connected instantly and joined forces. Their reusable pad project, in which volunteers make the pads, hand them out and teach women how to sew them, is a beautiful answer to period poverty. Today Sheeac is a full part of Plan for Gambia, and we're now working on our own manufacturing unit in the Gambia.
Aisha's family is right behind her, including her father, an imam, who speaks from a religious perspective to raise awareness about female empowerment in his own community.
Maaike and Aisha are both young, both studying and both working full-time jobs. They build Sheeac alongside all of that.
Plan for Gambia taught us that real change doesn't come from one hero with a cape. It comes from many hands, hearts and minds working as one.
This work is not easy, but it is real. And we'd love for you to be part of it.
