The Loomba Foundation

The Loomba Foundation is a non-profit, UN accredited, international NGO. We help widows and their children regardless of race, gender or religion. Our aim is to eradicate discrimination against widows, lobby governments to give widows their due pensions and rightful inheritances, empower widows through employment opportunities and educate their children. Widows face discrimination when they lose their husbands. They are abused, beaten and raped in some cases. Theor possesions and inheritance are taken away from them. They have no money so these programs are designed to help them to be self sufficient so they can support themesleves and their children. At the moment we are involved in two programs in India, educating the children of widows and a skills training program to help 30,000 widows in India. The skills training includes sewing machines and stitching as well as learning skills for a variety of industries to include telecommunications (call centres), beauty/wellness, healthcare/caregiving, tourism/hospitality, food processing, textile/apparel, agriculture and automotives. Over the years we have worked with Oxfam in Rwanda with widows of the genocide, Sir Richard Branson's charity Virgin Unite with widows and children affected by HIV in South Africa, with Cherie Blair's Foundation for Women in Malawi and Kenya helping women to sell Solar Aid products in their communities; and the Prince's Youth Business International trust whereby we provided loans to widows in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Kenya Syria and Nepal. Established in 1997 by Lord Loomba to honour his late mother Shrimati Wati Pushpa Loomba, the Foundation has since grown from strength to strength educating and empowering thousands of widows and their children around the world. The Foundation also successfully lobbied the UN to establish International Widows Day on 23 June at the UN 65th General Assembly in December 2010 .