Foundation Empowers 500 Widows

The Hydra Edge Foundation has distributed gift items to 500 hundred widows and the sum of N50, 000 each to 20 other widows in Lagos to start up small scale businesses.

The items donated include rice and garri, and is part of the annual community project for widows run by the foundation.The founder is the wife of Lagos State Commissioner for Transportation, Mrs. Abiodun Opeifa.

Distributing the items in Agege, Lagos, southwest Nigeria, Abiodun said impacting on the lives of widows was her calling and that the foundation had been doing this in the last four years.

According to her, this is the second time the foundation would be giving out N50,000 to some widows to start up a small scale business to fend for themselves and their children, adding that 10 widows benefitted from the scheme last year.

She said a community bank had been selected to guide them so that they would not use the money for something else.

“We have many widows coming here all the time and it showed that the programme has impacted on their lives. What we give them is not enough; the poverty rate in this country is very high.

“We have seen a case of 29-year old woman becoming a widow, with three kids and no job. We are giving them rice and garri today,” she stated.

Opeifa said that the foundation was seriously looking for support from privileged Nigerians to keep the programme going and impact on the lives of widows in the country.

Coordinator of the Hydra Community Project, Mr. Babatunde Jeje, explained that the widows that will benefit from the scheme were selected after rigorous interviews to ascertain their areas of needs.

“We have had cases where some women would pretend to be widows but during the course of interview, we discovered that they were not widows. We also have vocational training for the widows where we teach them how to make soap and others,” he stated.

One of the widows, Mrs Biodun Ariyo, who lost her husband three years commended Hydra Edge Foundation for the gesture.

—Kazeem Ugbodaga