WeProgress to turn disadvantaged widows to business owners

The Founder of Felix King Foundation, Ambassador Felix King has given widows across Nigeria another reason to smile as he launches a new initiative tagged Widows Economic Progress Meetings (WeProgress) with $500,000.

The project is wired to turn disadvantaged widows into small business owners. It is a pan-Nigeria program and it is targeted at disadvantaged widows in communities where widows’ maltreatment is still prevalent

The project will directly empower over 5,400widows in its 2018/19-project calendar year in a 380 cooperative meeting groups’ format.

Having recorded massive successes in WEFARM project, Skill acquisition and empowerment programs, Educational program for children of widows, welfare initiative and healthcare program for widows in Edo, Lagos and Ogun States, Felix King Foundation has decided to collapse the aforementioned initiative into WeProgress project.

According to King, over 90 per cent of women struggle to own small businesses and are denied access to capital. “WeProgress will help disadvantaged widows and active poor rural women in Nigeria communities gain access to capital they need to build their small businesses,” he said adding that “So that they too can contribute to the prosperity of their families and that of their communities. 

“In today’s Nigeria, women are made to face several responsibilities such as provision of shelter, foods, medical care, education and many more after the demise of their husbands. This sometimes results to their children dropping out of schools, high mortality rate among this class of Nigerians and in some cases resulting to a very bleak future.”

The rural based program has encouraged participants to form a meeting group of 10 to 20 women, appoint their meeting group representatives, get a verification letter from the recognised Community Head and register their group at www.felixkingfoundation.com/weprogress.

And once the group is certified, the foundation will give a business rotational grant to the meeting group with the community Head acting as patron.
On how the grant will be disbursed, Ambassador King said, this project is a woman-help-woman scheme.

According to him “Beneficiaries are expected to contribute 40per cent of their initial capital grant received from the Foundation in a year to the purse of the meeting group for four new women, who initially did not make the meeting group and two women in six months.”