Foundation Empowers 5,000 Widows, Orphans, Vulnerable Children in Katsina

By Francis Sardauna in Katsina

A humanitarian non-governmental organisation, Gwagware Foundation, has said that it has provided entrepreneurial training and start-up capital for 5,000 widows, single mothers, orphans and vulnerable children across the 34 local governments of Katsina State.

The NGO gave micro business grants and other incentives to the benefiting women who were drawn from different rural settlements in the state.

Speaking at the empowerment programme for 1,200 trained youth and women in Daura Sunday, the founder of the NGO, Dr. Dikko Umar Radda, said that the gesture was in line with the NGO’s core values of providing and empowering single mothers, widows and orphans in rural areas.

He said: “We started last year, and so far we have empowered over 5,000 people in Katsina State largely women because 4,000 of them are women which include widows, orphans and divorcees.

“We are empowering 1,200 women in today’s gathering, 100 women from each of the 12 local government areas that make up Daura senatorial zone. We trained and empowered them to improve their livelihood and that of their families.”

Radda, who is also the Director General of Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), urged the women to be prudent in investing the capital they were given so as to grow their business as entrepreneurs.

“I urged these beneficiaries to properly manage what has been given to them today for them to grow their businesses and remain economically independent, even as single mothers,” he said.

The SMEDAN DG observed that most homes are run by single mothers and widows, especially in the rural communities, adding that many of them earn little or nothing as income to meet their needs, hence the empowerment.

According to him, “We also called on well-meaning Nigerians to join hands with this movement because when women are economically empowered, the society will be better for it.”

In an interview with a widow and mother of six, Hadiza Maigoro Daura, who was given business capital, she expressed gratitude to the NGO and called on philanthropists to key into the initiative of the foundation in order to alleviate the sufferings of the vulnerable.