The United Nations marks 23rd June of every year as International Widows Day to highlight the abuse of millions of widows and their children across the world who endure extreme poverty, ostracism, violence, ill health and discrimination due to local laws and customs. The Loomba Foundation under the pioneering leadership of Lord Raj Loomba CBE has been helping widows achieve financial, social and emotional security across developing countries such as India and in Sub-Saharan Africa.
“When my father passed away, he left plenty of financial resources behind which my mother used to fund the education for me and my six siblings,” he recalls.
Having witnessed a complete change in his mother’s social and cultural life when she was widowed at the mere age of 37 years, Raj became increasingly aware of the conservative perceptions towards widows and their treatment. Following the death of his mother in 1992, he resolved to raise international visibility to injustices to the widows on the global front and established The Loomba Foundation in the UK on 26 June 1997 together with his wife Lady Veena Loomba. It has been over two decades since the charity was founded. From running innumerable workshops to lobbying governments both on the national and international scale, The Loomba Foundation has been at the forefront of campaigning for widows’ empowerment.
“We started with a small programme where we educated about 100 children of widows in Delhi and the programme was inaugurated by the then Prime Minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Over the years, we have educated over 10,000 such children across India,” he explains.
Through this project Lord Loomba provided, for a minimum period of five years, a monthly scholarship of Rupees 500 to each child which ensured that every child would not only be able to pay for his school fees but also pay for their day-to-day expenses. However, Lord Loomba quickly realised that he wanted to empower these widows beyond providing monetary support and ventured into the idea of providing sewing machines.
“My friend Max Mongia, had collected about £2,300 from his local Lions club which he had donated to my charity and he proposed that I buy sewing machine kits for these widows. Eventually we bought about 90 of such kits so, that these widows especially in rural villages can earn their everyday livelihood by tailoring clothes for their community,” he explains.
The programme extended to a three month extensive training workshop after tying up with Barry Palmer, the then President of Lions Club International where about 2,600 widows were trained in the skill of sewing. The charity’s work has in the past extended beyond India and into African countries where widows are often marginalised owing to deaths of their husbands due to HIV, but also in Middle-Eastern and Central Asian countries such as Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan where he has extended his support to “half widows”.
“Half-widows are the women whose husbands may have been buried in mass graves or when they are not aware of the circumstances under which their husbands went missing,” he explains.
However, his most recent and ambitious project is his partnership with the Rotary India Literacy Mission (RILM) where he is aiming to empower 30,000 widows in India by providing them training and getting them industry-ready in about eight key sectors including hospitality and hair and beauty care.
“We have identified agencies across states which would provide a six-month training workshop for all widows between the age of 20-45 years old with a pre-condition that 80% of them are equipped to find a job,” he explains.
These agencies include Emporium Training and Consultancy Pvt. Ltd. in Kolkata and Lok Bharti in Delhi among others.
The Loomba Foundation is currently seeking donations to help fund this project and help 30,000 widows in India over the next five years. To make a donation please visit: http://bit.ly/LoombaAV
Read more about the Loomba Foundation in the brochure accompanying his week's Asian Voice and Gujarat Samachar. Pledge form is in the brochure.
