One of the painful events of life women go through is widowhood, because after the loss of a husband, companionship, breadwinner and supportive aspects of her life are taken away.
Widowhood puts stress on women, which affects them domestically, economically, mentally, physically and spiritually.
Most widows take over the responsibilities of the entire family the moment the man dies normally without any profitable source of income. In situations where the children are many or at their younger ages financial burden is put on the widow.
Some widows live in the valley of ill-health, poverty and fear, especially in communities where widowhood rites are dehumanising.
There are over 1,000,000.00 widows in Ghana whose children risk not finishing their education, thereby not being able to obtain employability skills. These children are eventually thrown into very difficult situations.
In the event of dropping out of school, they resort to unhealthy economic and social activities to earn socio-economic wellbeing for the widow.
This is particularly problematic for girls, women domestically, economically, mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually.
It is in line of these and many other unpalatable situations that WidowsAid_Gh has come in to support widows across the country for them to come back to their normalcy.
WidowsAid_Gh is a registered Non-Governmental Organisation which was launched in 2018. The Organisation aims to inspire hope and extend aid to widows by providing productive livelihood opportunities that contribute to their household income and general wellbeing. The organisation is marked by expressing humanistic values and devotion to the welfare of widows across Ghana.
The goals of WidowsAid_Gh is to provide these vulnerable women with the right economic, educational, social tools and opportunities that will enable them to achieve sustainable livelihood income to enhance their general wellbeing.
The vision and the mission is to demonstrate the love of God and extend humanitarian relief to widows and to inspire hope and extend aid to widows by providing productive livelihood opportunities that contribute to their household income and general wellbeing.
NOMINATION & SELECTION OF WIDOWS
Whoever wants to nominate a widow in any part of the 16 regions must go through four simple steps.
First, one must inform the nominee about Widowsaid_Gh by letting her be aware of the decision to nominate her to receive the aid, second, take information about the nominee such as age, name, contact numbers, year of widowhood, among others, three, submit the information in step two to the following telephone numbers: 0249 300119 and 0262525310 and lastly, have the assurance that the nominee would be contacted by WidowAid_Gh and as such her contact number should always be active.
The WidowsAid_Gh has been in existence for about seven years and it’s nominations are to the general public to nominate women who have been widows for at least seven years without being remarried.
The team contacts each nominee to ascertain their level of need and after a successful process; a determined number of nominees are selected to receive aid.
Selected widows are fully funded, transported to the host city and hosted for at least two days for training and coaching by resource personnel and team volunteers.
They are trained and funded to start various small scale businesses that contribute to their household income.
Widows are afterwards taken on free shopping at the mall, which is fully funded by the organisation.
They are also given cash donations, clothes, electrical gadgets, cosmetic products, detergents, food items such as bags of rice, oils, mackerels etc.
TARGETS FOR 2021 PROJECT
The Project Director, Ernest Acquah, said the 2021 project is aimed at ensuring that the widows are well treated in Ghana.
He said “we aim at setting up Small Scale Businesses for selected widows across Ghana, organise free general health consultation, Hypertension Screening, Diabetic Screening, Malaria RDT, COVID-19 etiquette, prescription and dispensary of medicines and referral services for complicated cases to ensure continuity of care and embark on material donations to widows
“We hope to make over Ghc 200,000 cash donations to widows, provide alternative livelihood training for widows, organise free shopping at Takoradi Mall for widows, free legal consultation for widows and special domestic support to widows
Asked to explain further about the legal consultation, Mr Acquah explained that most widows are in litigation with the families of the late husbands but because they had no money to secure the services of lawyers, they are taken for granted.
He said Widowsaid_Gh will come in for such widows and provide them with legal backing through a lawyer.
DONATION
The organisation wishes to invite individuals, organisations and humanitarian groups to partner and donate to to continue to support widows. Donate in Cash or in Kind -MTN MOBILE MONEY-MOMO-#0558863715-WidowsAid Ghana.