About Us

WISE is an innovative, sustainable social enterprise for women in Lismore and the Northern Rivers. WISE runs projects and initiatives that empower women in the region, improve their well-being, advance economic and social equality, and work to remove disadvantage that women still face.

WISE supports the empowerment of disadvantaged and marginalised Northern Rivers women to overcome barriers to economic participation, employment, entrepreneurial opportunities and to achieving financial self-agency. Our projects increase confidence, improve financial literacy and business skills in a safe and inclusive environment with ongoing support and mentoring.

WISE is a service of Northern Rivers Women and Children’s Services Incorporated (NORWACS), a feminist, community-based charity that provides health and wellbeing services for the diversity of women, and their children, in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales.

Women in Social Enterprise acknowledge the people of the Bundjalung Nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which we live and work today. We pay respect to their elders past and present and emerging leaders, as well as all other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia. This country was never ceded and always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

We endorse the ‘Uluru Statement From the Heart’ to call for the establishment of a ‘First Nations Voice’ in the Australian Constitution and a ‘Makarrata Commission’ to supervise a process of ‘agreement-making’ and ‘truth telling’ between governments and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.