Leaders from industry, politics and civil society gathered at the prestigious headquarters of BAFTA in London’s Piccadilly, on Saturday 22 June for a glittering gala dinner to support rural widows in India.
Hosted by Lord Loomba in aid of the Bharat Widows Empowerment Fund, the gala took place on the eve of UN International Widows Day, the annual day of action initiated by the Loomba Foundation in 2005 and unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly five years later.
Guests flew in from India, the United States, Dubai and elsewhere to witness Loomba Foundation President Lady Cherie Blair, CBE KC, and the President and CEO of the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), Dr Mukesh Aghi, sign a Memorandum of Understanding to extend the partnership between the two organisations to fund the empowerment programme for a further 5,000 disadvantaged widows and dependents in the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir. This builds on their current programme for 5,000 widows in the State of Uttar Pradesh, which began last year and is due to be completed by the end of 2024.
In addition, the evening raised some £70,000 from sponsors and donors, including more than £30,000 in a charity auction conducted by bestselling author Lord Jeffrey Archer, with lots including a business class trip for two and stay at the Palm Jumeira Palm Hotel in Dubai donated by Brightsun Travel, and two luxury four-day Treasures of India tours for two on the legendary Maharajas Express taking in the Taj Mahal in Agra, the Ranthambore National Park with its tigers, wild boars, hyenas, jackals and leopards, and the Amber Fort and Rambagh Palace in the Pink City of Jaipur, kindly donated by IRCTC.
Thanking the sponsors and donors, Lord Loomba revealed that this year’s International Widows Day had a special significance for his family as it was seventy years to the day since his own mother, the inspiration for the Loomba Foundation and for International Widows Day, had herself been widowed, and he pledged to redouble the Foundation’s efforts in the years to come to empower rural widows throughout India and to banish discrimination against widows throughout the world.
As Lady Blair put it, “Millions of widows in countries all over the world find themselves marginalised and without the means to support themselves and this leads to terrible outcomes for them, for their children and for the wider community. This is why The Loomba Foundation’s first programme – launched over a quarter of a century ago – was to educate the children of poor widows in India, transforming over two hundred thousand lives over the next decade, and it is also why we now put so much focus on empowering disadvantaged widows to help them become economically self-sufficient.”
Bharat Widows Empowerment Fund is the Loomba Foundation’s wider ambition to empower 100,000 disadvantaged widows across rural India to become economically independent by 2030 in alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals to leave no-one behind.
To place the programme on a sustainable footing for achieving that ambition, the foundation established the Bharat Widows Empowerment Fund, which was launched by Loomba Foundation President Cherie Blair at the British High Commissioner’s residence in New Delhi on 21 October 2023.
Prosperity for Widows
Launched by Lord Loomba in New Delhi on 19 October 2022, Prosperity for Widows is an empowerment project for 5,000 rural widows in the State of Uttar Pradesh, India, developed by The Loomba Foundation in partnership with the US-India Friendship Alliance (USIFA), the charitable arm of the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum. The partnership with USIFA was formalised at the House of Lords in London on
9 December 2022 when Dr Mukesh Aghi, President of the USISPF, and Cherie Blair CBE KC, President of the Loomba Foundation, signed a memorandum of understanding in the company of the High Commissioner of India, Lord and Lady Loomba, and Loomba Foundation Trustee Mr Harjiv Singh.
