Podcast Interview with the Global Fund For Widows Founder Heather Ibrahim-Leathers
Widowhood can kick off a vicious cycle of poverty. The Global Fund for Widows—the world’s largest non-profit organization focused on innovating financial inclusion by working directly with widows – is helping widows build a permanent source of capital so they can launch micro-businesses and build a more sustainable future for themselves and their families.
In this special interview, WI-HER’s Director of Finance & Administration – Sam Kasbari sits down with Heather Ibrahim-Leathers, the founder of the Global Fund for Widows, to talk about the non-profit’s mission and why widows have been historically overlooked in programming and interventions. “When we started doing more research, I realized this is actually a global human rights crisis,” Ms. Ibrahim-Leathers said during the interview. “It’s massive, and no one is talking about it… there’s at least 300 million widows around the world. That’s an official number, but it’s actually massively under characterized.”
Heather also discusses why that number is actually low, the implications of widowhood on the Sustainable Development Goals, and how widowhood can lead to multiple human rights violations, including disinheritance/economic violence, and structural discrimination, among others.
We invite you to listen in and learn more about the work of Global Fund for Widows here:
Podcast participants:
Sam Kasbari – SK
Heather Ibrahim-Leathers – HIK
Sam Kasbari (SK): Welcome to our special podcast episode commemorating the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. My name is Sam Kasbari, and I am the Director of Finance and Administration at WI-HER, and today we have the distinct honor of hosting Heather Ibrahim-Leathers. She is the founder of the Global Fund for Widows. Thank you, Heather. for joining us on this important occasion. A little bit about the Global Fund for Widows: It is one of the world’s largest nonprofits that economically empowers widows in the developing world. They do this by building their own financial inclusion innovation of the VSLA or village savings and loan associations, or micro banks, and they provide them with a permanent source of capital from which they can launch their businesses. The organization Global Fund for Widows has raised more than a million dollars for technical and economic programs worldwide. They have built about 185 banks around the world and have empowered more than 26,000 widows and have helped 64,000 of their children across nine countries, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Cameroon, Malawi, India, and the Dominican Republic. To start, Heather, can you tell us, can you tell our listeners about yourself and the mission of the Global Fund for Widows?
Heather Ibrahim-Leathers (HIL): Hi Sam, thank you so much. And it’s an honor to be here with WI-HER and with you today. Thank you so much for including Global Fund for Widows.
SK: Anytime.
HIL: Yes, so about myself. Well, I started Global Fund for Windows after retiring from a 16-year-long career as a investment banker slash financial engineer on Wall Street where I spent most of my career focused on financial institutions and banks. And I spent, I guess, most of that investing in banks but also analyzing them on the sell side and raising capital for them. And I kind of accidentally fell into this role. I didn’t really know what I was doing, I would say when I first started it. I was pregnant with my second child, and right then and there, my grandmother became ill and passed away and she really was very special to me.
HIL: But what was even more difficult for me to comprehend sort of as I was grieving was not really you know how special she was, but why her life had taken such a tragic turn and why, all the time that I had known her it was really just a very difficult life. And it really came down to the moment where she herself was widowed, and I learned that she was widowed very young. At 35 with four children and was disinherited. And that act of disinheritance from her in-laws resulted in what, what I call the sort of that moment of that, that moment of impoverishment, where it kicks off this vicious cycle of poverty.
HIL: She went from being quite a wealthy woman to being impoverished overnight and having to make a difficult decision of which child she could afford to educate. And that really began what was my moment of obligation and I started working towards, you know, at first saying, ‘Okay, I know a lot of Egyptian widows, maybe I can just help a few of them.’ And then as we started doing more research, I really, I realized this is actually a global human rights crisis. It’s massive, and no one’s talking about it. And when I say massive, it’s massive. There’s at least 300 million widows around the world. And that’s an official number, but it’s actually massively under-characterized, because widows—for the most part, marriages in Sub-Saharan Africa are not registered. And so those widows that are counted actually are not, our official widows officially counted in censuses, as opposed to unofficial marriages which are customary in nature, and that’s the majority I would say, 80% of marriages. And then the other thing is the data itself, the 300 million widows are—the data is 20 years old, so it doesn’t account for the global conflicts that have plagued our, you know, our history for the last 20 years. It’s quite remarkable when you think about conflict, etc., how many widows exist and so, for me, it was an opportunity to start serving and to start giving back and the best way I know how to do that is what, you know, governs my own life, which is the golden rule. She who has the gold makes the rules. And so we just decided that we would begin with economically empowering widows first and foremost, in order to give them the ability to address their family’s needs and their own needs.
SK: Thank you. That’s truly inspiring work that you’re doing. I understand that you are also an active advocate for the rights of widows at the United Nations and your organization was part of the group of organizations that drove this effort to, for this day to be recognized, the Day, International Widows Day, that is observed on, in June of each year. So can you tell us how that was? How that process was after many years?
HIL: Wow. Well, there’s actually—we were not involved in the resolution, in the process to get International Widows Day on the map. We actually didn’t even know that—it was so early in our career, we were actually just economically empowering widows in Egypt when Lord Loomba from Loomba Foundation in the UK was able to get this opportunity for the UN to pass this resolution to create International Widows Day through I want to say it was through Loomba… So it was a lovely opportunity for us to be able to meet other organizations early on. I think it was 2012, when we were brand new to this work, but we really didn’t have much of a role in creating International Widows Day. What we did have a role in is the creation of the resolution that essentially created and recognized widows, and as a human rights crisis, and also created rules and regulations and requirements from governments to address the situation of widows in each of their countries. That was a resolution that I drafted six years ago on my kitchen table one summer night and really kind of parked it and thought, you know, maybe one day a girl can dream that we would have real laws in place to protect widows. And it wasn’t until 2021, after the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations in March, where I decided that the time was right, and I dusted off the resolution.
I circulated it among my colleagues around the world, partners that I have around the world, and we were able to put in language that we felt that was germane. I essentially kitchen sinked it. I really asked for almost everything that can possibly think of and then we gave that resolution to Sierra Leone. And from the moment we gave it to Sierra Leone, their ambassador who was also a daughter of a widow and understood what we were talking about, she had heard me at the UN speak and she was like this happened to me, and I thought it was just me, but I can’t believe that this is happening around the world. So she adopted us really and took this forward. And that was Ambassador Soleimani of Sierra Leone. She gave the resolution to her minister; her minister was very pleased with it, showed it to the President, the President approved and we launched a process. We helped we help them create a core group; we helped them advocate and edit the language with the Africa group, and then I proceeded to meet with 100 countries bilaterally in order to address the issue of widowhood and to teach them about the issue because no one had understood what it was and what the implications were.
Over the course of one year we met with these countries. We started engaging in the negotiations, we were in the background on each and every one of the drafts, and each and every one of the negotiations behind the scenes, and it was really exciting. We, you know, were mentioned twice in the General Assembly, as it the resolution was being adopted. It was a great, great honor, indeed one of the greatest honors of my life in order to be able to get that approved.
SK: Absolutely.
HIL: Unanimously adopted I should say.
SK: Inspiring work, Heather. So why do you think this issue hasn’t received the attention it deserves historically? Why did it take so long for such a day to be observed after… it’s very unfortunate that such an important issue has been disregarded for so long.
HIL: Agreed. Agreed, because it’s so central to the 2030 agenda and all of the SDGs. Or I shouldn’t say all. I will tell you that 12 of the SDGs are directly linked to widowhood, and unless we’re addressing the issue of widowhood, we’re really not going to be able to address, or you know, achieve the stainable development goals as outlined by 2030. You know, one of the—so I sat down and I really unpacked what are the human rights violations that widows endure? And it really came down to three major violations.
HIL: The first is this issue of disinheritance slash economic violence, right? Where widows are disinherited. They are unable to inherit, whether it’s land property, even their own identity, sometimes they can’t inherit their children because the children are worth more in the algorithm of inheritance than the widow herself. And so it is a very, very economically violent process where they’re removed from having an income, having assets to fall back on. So that’s a major vulnerability.
HIL: The second is what I call discrimination. This human rights violation of discrimination and, I’m not talking about, you know, the color of your skin or you know, the caste that you’re from, I’m talking about structural laws and policies that prevent widows from actually inheriting. That means they’re prevented from accessing their rights in court. They’re prevented from access to capital, for example. There are gaps in policies, for example, microfinance sometimes poses to be a solution and they’ll come to the widows and they’ll say, Oh, I’ll give you the $100 loan. Where’s your collateral? Well, I don’t have collateral because my husband die, and my father in law kicked me out of the house and I wasn’t able to inherit. No worries. Why don’t you just tell us who your male cosigner is? Well, I don’t have a male cosigner because my husband died and my father in law kicked me out of the house, and my brother in law took all my property. So, you know, there’s a structural gap. This is structural discriminatory practices and laws that prevent the widow from inheriting.
HIL: Then the third is what we call harmful traditional practices. This human rights violation is actually culturally endorsed, culturally mandated forms of physical violence that the widow is forced to endure. And I’m talking about over 50% of widows in Sub Saharan Africa are forced to endure this type of physical violence. Oftentimes, in most cases, it’s sexual violence and we’ve seen there—that manifests itself in multiple different ways that probably are too heartbreaking to speak of on a day like today on the celebration of, you know, the eradication of poverty. But what I would say is that because these widows endure these major forms of violence and discrimination and are moved into what I consider the survival mode.
HIL: The other important thing to understand is that most widows are actually widowed young, over 51% of widows are widowed under the age of 39. Which means they are mothers to young children. And so they literally go into what I call survival mode. And when they’re in survival mode, you’re not talking about what happened to them. They’ve actually been forced not to talk about what happened to them, because they are threatened all the time. By their community and by the families that were part of theirs at one point. So if they’re not talking about their predicament, how is it supposed to enter into our social consciousness? It’s very difficult. And so that’s really why I think that widows have been overlooked for all these years.
SK: Thank you Heather. You have been a voice—your organization have been a voice for these widows. I understand it’s challenging to work with governments to change or create laws that protects them. Can you shed some light on how your organization addresses widowhood and collaborates directly with widows to overcome poverty?
HIL: Yes, I mean, yes, it goes really back to that golden rule. She who has the gold makes the rules. And for me, it’s giving her access to capital directly in her hand, so what we decided to do some five years ago is to innovate on a common banking practice that the entire world really understands and is familiar with. It’s the Community Bank model or the savings and loan model. Every country has a methodology by which the unbanked bank. And they’ve been doing this for hundreds, if not 1000s of years. It’s the way my mother was able to, you know, save enough money to purchase her first sewing machine in Alexandria, Egypt, and ultimately become a fashion designer. It’s how—it’s just how the unbanked bank. So this savings model usually is a group of people come together, and they agree on an amount of money that they’re all going to contribute every month. And then at the end of that month, one person gets to win that pot and winning that pot gives them a cash windfall, where they’re able to go out and you know, purchase the capital asset that they need in order to start their business or whatever it is.
HIL: So we decided to take that model and essentially put it on steroids. The first thing that we do is we go into our communities where we have strong partners and we talk to the widows and ask them, what do they want to do in terms of businesses, and how much they think it will cost and on average, the widows say that they need about $100 to start a small business, a micro enterprise.
HIL: So we usually say okay, and we tell them that they only need to save 33% of that $100 or $33, and during the period in which they’re saving that money usually takes about three months for them to save, we’re training them on financial literacy and business skills, on how to manage their little micro bank. We call them micro banks, the widows’ savings and loan association, or WSALA for short, and essentially they registered their WSALA with the local government entities, they elect their leadership, and you know, they work with their chiefs and Imams, and, you know, community leaders in order to be able to be ready for launch. And about three months, when they’ve saved that $33, they bring that $33 to the bank, or this meeting. And this meeting is essentially them putting the $33 in a box and that box represents that—that putting their money in the box represents the purchase of their own share in their own bank. So for the group of 25, it means that each widow puts in $33 and she owns 1/25 of that bank. And then for every dollar that the widow puts in, Global Fund for Widows uses donations that come to us in order to match that capital purchase from the widow, that $33 two to one, and so we co-capitalized the bank and essentially we put in $67 for every widow that puts in 33. So two to one match. It goes in as a grant from us and immediately that widows’ one share is not worth $33 anymore, it’s worth $100. And now that widow is able to go out, take $100 loan from the bank to build her own micro enterprise. And then when she’s done, you know she’s able to pay herself back with the interest that they set and that really becomes a virtuous cycle from which the widows have this permanent source of capital that they can keep coming to in order to be able to grow their businesses or pool capital and start new businesses, etc.
SK: A very sustainable model. Can you please share with us how—what skills and knowledge these widows acquire from this model and from the micro bank experience?
HIK: It’s been really transformative—thank you for the question. It’s been more transformative than I would have ever imagined. So, in terms of the skills the widows obviously gain a lot of financial skills and financial literacy skills, but what’s beautiful about the microbank that we develop, this WSALA, is that the widows actually come together every week or sometimes every other week. Now these women went from being ostracized and victims of atrocity, to being in a group of women who have experienced the same thing. And again, don’t forget that they were just normal members of communities before they became widows. So they went from being included to excluded and now they find another group, a sisterhood if you will.
HIL: So the sisterhood is really the social and emotional support that they need. It becomes a really powerful mechanism for healing. But then in addition to that, the widows also use it as an opportunity for a marketplace. They support each other. So during the holidays, the widows are purchasing from each other, not even holidays. I mean, I’ve been in situations where they’re all buying their vegetables from the widow that lives on this corner and—or sells on this corner and their fish from the widow that sells on this corner and they become an integral marketplace for themselves and send their family members and send their loved ones to the widows to support them.
HIL: And then most importantly, it also becomes a factor for best practice sharing so that the widows actually talk and they say wow, he sold that to you for what? He sold it to me for that; he’s never doing that again, and they’re able to negotiate better pricing for themselves. We also train them in their legal rights and entitlements. So once their businesses are up and running and they are really kind of very, very comfortable in being members of the WSALA, we overlay a community paralegal program, and that community paralegal has six modules that teaches the widows on their rights, the rights to inheritance, to ownership of land, to the right to live free of violence, to their rights to be able to access what was taken from them. And we’ve taken, I think this past year, we took some 400 cases to court so it gives them a voice that they hadn’t had before—that that they had lost somewhere along the way. But there’s been tremendous, tremendous uplift and these widows are actually advocating for themselves now. We’ve had widows run for office. We have—and win, so they’re sitting on various seats in local councils. It’s really been a remarkable transformation.
SK: Totally. It must be incredible to witness this transformation that’s possible when the widows are empowered and given the tools, and thank your organization for giving them that. Finally Heather, what message would you like to convey to the international development community that no one is left behind, especially widows?
HIK: I think that we just need to understand, that we can’t—we really can’t leave anyone behind. But we need to start looking at root causes. I think a lot of the development world chases the obvious problem, but they’re not looking at the root cause of that problem, and if we really want to achieve progress, we need to really start understanding root causes of issues and addressing those root causes, so that we really, you know, consummate true, sustainable long-term change.
SK: Powerful message Thank you, Heather. Thanks for sharing your insights and for your dedication to this cause. We applaud your efforts and wish you continued success in your mission. Thanks again for being with us today.
HIK: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure and an honor. Thank you Sam and thank you to the WI-HER organization and community.
SK: Thanks. Thanks all for joining us for this special episode of the WI-HER podcast. I’m Sam Kasbari, and we were honored today to have Heather Ibrahim-Leathers, founder of the Global Fund for Widows with us today. Please share your thoughts in the comments section. And remember, we all play a role in eradicating poverty and ensuring no one is left behind. Thank you and have a great day.
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