GLOBAL FUND FOR WIDOWS INC

Our Mission
The Global Fund for Widows is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering widows and female heads of households to overcome
poverty through skills-based training, job creation, and micro-finance. Ultimately, our goal is to help widows achieve financial stability, self-sufficiency, accountability, and importantly, become a role model to her own children and to others.

The Global Fund for Widows applies its programs throughout the developing world by forming strategic partnerships with local NGOs, which are dedicated to the empowerment of widows. These local NGOs work in close collaboration with the Global Fund for Widows to develop unique solutions for empowering widows that are culturally and socially appropriate, and most importantly—SUSTAINABLE.

Egypt:
In 2012, the GFW launched the Amal (meaning ‘hope’ in Arabic) Project in rural Egypt. Amal started as a humble effort to economically empower widows and female breadwinners through vocational and financial literacy training, as well as micro-finance and innovative micro-social savings and lending groups. Amal equips widows with the resources and support needed to establish micro-enterprises, and in turn to sustain themselves and their families.

To date, Amal Project has empowered 7.000 widows. Next year, the Amal Project will organize these widows into farming cooperatives, allowing them to achieve pricing power in the marketplace and build out economic value chains to ensure visibility into their income streams. With this strategy, Amal Project widows can truly achieve sustainability.

India
The Global Fund for Widows launched programming in India in 2017 in partnership with the Guild of Service, a veteran in the field for widows’ empowerment. The Sana Project, focused on the war torn region of Jammu and Kashmir, aimed to train war widows – most of whom have young children – in the ancient art of Kashmiri embroidery. Over 50 widows received 36 days of embroidery training. Upon graduation, 70% of the widows received a government Artisan Card, a critical certification that enables them to work readily in the private or public sector. In addition to helping many of the widows place into permanent jobs within the region, The Global Fund for Widows connected its graduates to industry designers, thereby enabling them to work from home and earn a sustainable income.

The Global Fund for Widows is currently expanding activities by sponsoring value chains to support the embroidery enterprises. Widows will be recruited to become vendors for raw materials needed to support widows who are embroidering, such as threads, needles, and textiles. Other widows will become solar lantern vendors and operate solar charging stations, not only supporting widows efforts to increase their own productivity, but helping others in the community such as students who need light to study at night. With these initiatives, the Global Fund for Widows expects to cultivate a well-integrated value chain that offers widows an income stream that is highly visible, and highly sustainable.

Bolivia
With a small NGO partner in Bolivia, the GFW launched a Micro-Social Capital program to provide widows with a small capital investment to launch a micro-enterprise. The widow in return enters into a social contract with the GFW, promising to use profits from her enterprise to extend the virtuous cycle and money multiplier effect by hiring another widow as she expands her own activities. Widows in this program have build home kiosks and expanded their home restaurant businesses, and now hire widows to help them keep up with the demand.

In 2014, GFW helped finance a small pig farm to benefit the widows. Today, the widows plan to sell 140 pigs during the holiday season, earning them an unprecedented income of $20,000 per year. GFW is also helping to build out value chains for these widows, expanding widows businesses into providing feedstock for the pigs as well as cooking and curing to sell into the retail market, thereby improving income streams and helping them achieve sustainability.

Dominican Republic
Following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, orphans created by the quake were sent to orphanages in the Dominican Republic. Orphanages in the DR consequently doubled in size, with no increase to their operating budgets from the government. The GFW instituted a partnership with the orphanages, providing critical funding to allow them to hire WIDOWS to become caregivers, nurses, teachers, and cooks to the orphans. The program, welcomed by the orphans, the orphanage, and the Dominican community, is ongoing with great success.