…400 Widows are trained in several skill acquisition programs.
As the world commemorates International Widow’s Day, the Helpline Foundation for the Needy, an Abuja-based non-governmental organization, identify skill acquisition and financial empowerment as critical in addressing widows’ invisibility in the country on Wednesday.
Over 400 widows from the six Area Councils in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and bordering states of Nasarawa and Niger have received skill acquisition training from the group.
The group also expressed displeasure with government policies at all levels that fail to address the complex concerns that widows face around the world, stating that such indifference implies that widowhood would continue to be a problem unaddressed.
President and Founder of Helpline Foundation for the Needy Abuja, Dr. Jumai Ahmadu, who spoke at the 2021 International Widow’s Day organized by the foundation in collaboration with Nigeria Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ) and Make A Difference for the Needy Foundation, however, affirmed that the foundation is poised in making widows in the nation’s capital to be more productive in the society.
While commenting on this year’s theme: ““Invisible Women, Invisible Problems”, Ahmadu noted that the theme urges all and sundry to identify widows and make their problems visible to society.
Her words; “Among various ethnic groups, the widows are even deprived of their privileges. This theme of Widows’ Day 2021 therefore, urges us to identify those women and make their problems visible to society. Specifically, we are here today in ensuring that widows are not only empowered, but are made visible to policy makers.
“Helpline Foundation and other critical stakeholders have come to the sudden realization that policies focus upon common citizens, labourers, jobless youth, and other suffering segments of the society but nothing is specifically discussed about widows in policy-making meetings. Therefore, we will continue to highlight the issues of this ignored group to make our society more sustainable”.
It would be recalled that the International Widows’ Day is an awareness day of the United Nation set aside to discuss the hardships that widows face. It is a day designated to highlight the problems of widows and encourage people to help widows in struggling against the challenges of life.
