Through an upcoming collaborative initiative, the Global Fund for Widows (GFW) and Pakistan-based Kaarvan Crafts Foundation (KCF) will continue making strides toward promoting women’s rights.
Khudi, the new program that emerged from the partnership, seeks to provide widows and disenfranchised women with economic opportunity and stability.
“We’re starting by supporting 175 widows in Pakistan… and we’re very excited,” Elena Saenz Feehan, executive director at GFW, told The Informer. “It’s just a pilot, and we’re going to work to then grow it and reach out to all the widows who need our help in Pakistan.”
While Khudi doesn’t have an exact launch date yet, it will align with both organizations’ missions to spread gender equality and end poverty through supporting entrepreneurship. The name itself perfectly embodies GWF and KCF’s collaborative efforts to improve vulnerable women’s circumstances, as in Urdu, Khudi is a philosophical concept meaning selfhood and inner strength.
It will focus on microloans through GFW’s Widows Savings and Loans Associations (WISALAs), which consist of “micro-banks” that are each owned by 25 widows who don’t need collateral or a male guarantor to join.
Since 2019, the WISALAs have multiplied widows’ income and savings in African nations such as Kenya, Egypt and Tanzania by 14. These banks have helped women take legal action to reclaim lost assets and secure homes and land for themselves and their children.
“With Khudi, we are reimagining financial inclusion for widows,” said Danish Khan, CEO of KCF, in a statement sent to The Informer. “WISALA places economic agency directly in their hands—enabling women to move from survival to growth, from uncertainty to ownership.”
Two Organizations, One Shared Goal
For the last 22 years, KCF has opened more than 250 training centers to help women in need develop the life skills necessary to improve their financial situations.
The non-profit business educates women, connects them to relevant urban markets and works toward bridging the gap between rural and urban communities. It does so through many initiatives, some of which include: fostering entrepreneurial growth, especially through embroidery businesses; training women in efficient dairy and livestock farming practices to ensure the use and sale of products; and furthering digital equity by enhancing women’s digital literacy so they can connect to more markets.
Mashal Khan, head of strategic communications at KCF, has been with the organization for a decade. Throughout her many years of service, she has admired the way KCF has played an active part in changing people’s mindsets and creating a strong sense of solidarity among the communities they’ve helped.
“Over time, we’ve seen the trajectory of the women,” she said. “The transformation that comes from when they initially join,… [when] they’re more shy and muted [to] the end of three or four years when they’re fully confident.”
The strategic communications director has seen how the impacted women are eager to share their successes and skills learned with others who may not have been able to participate in KCF’s programs. She shared the story of a particular instance when a group gathered the money needed to gift two women, who were on the waitlist for one of KCF’s initiatives, a high-tech sewing machine. Such an act showed that many women in need believe that no one should be left behind.
“This is just the generosity of the communities I’ve seen. They’re so wholehearted,” she told The Informer. “I think those are the moments [when] the community feels like family. There’s that moment of sisterhood [when] they… feel safe enough to and confide in each other.”
Women, especially widows, need substantial support from each other and organizations like both GFW and KCF, which tirelessly advocate for them in a world full of gender-based violence and power imbalances. According to the United Nations, approximately 258 women are widowed, with 6 million of those located in Pakistan.
For Saenz Feehan and those at GFW, the definition of widowhood is quite broad, extending further than just a woman whose spouse has passed away. Widows include but are not limited to: women who previously relied on their spouses and were abandoned; those whose spouses have had to leave due to conflict; women whose husbands have been incarcerated; and women who have escaped abusive relationships.
Widowhood can affect the entire familial unit, as some women may have to pull their children out of school due to a lack of funds for education, or resort to arranging their children’s marriages after not being able to take care of them.
Saenz Feehan describes widowhood as the “root cause” for many developmental issues GFW focuses on around the world.
“So, if we don’t acknowledge the particular issues of widows, we’re neglecting part of the population, and therefore will not be able to achieve the development goals we’re all seeking to achieve,” Saenz Feehan said.
She hopes that through GFW’s work— which will be amplified once Khudi comes into complete fruition— the stigma that a woman’s life is over once her husband dies or leaves will cease to exist.
“Women have the right to continue with their lives once their husband is not there, and continue supporting their families and take ownership of their future,” Saenz Feehan told The Informer. “My biggest hope is to be able to support the women [who] are in need and come to us with their ideas and their hopes.”
