Empowering Lives
Providing support, therapy, advice, and funding for business start ups.
Petty Trading Assistance
Many of the Widows registered with our organisation are poor and several of them at one point or the other have approached us for help. We have been able to assist some of them in very critical conditions depending on the availability of funds.
Some did not have any work or business prior to the demise of their husband and to cope with three, four and sometimes five children had posed serious challenges to them. Depending on availability of funds, we provide some of them funds to start petty trading and small enterprises.
Spiritual and Material Support
The organisation has helped in giving both spiritual and material support to widows. Prayers and counselling periods were organised mainly for widows. Members do stand up to help many widows by contributing to the education of their children, providing them with food stuff and clothing. It was discovered that widows in this type of environment where assistance were given them were able to cope with widowhood challenges than their counterpart without helpers.
Re-integration Scheme
JoyBearers also help in re-integrating them into the society by standing during the period of their widowhood rites and encouraging their involvement in church activities which has greatly helped them in overcoming the problems of loneliness.
Surrogate Parenting
The organisation encourages couples to take the children of the very poor widows as children to themselves. The children can visit them or spend some time with them. The surrogate parents are encouraged to take up some of the children’s responsibilities like payment of their school fees, purchase of trading/skill equipment among others. This has brought life and happiness not only to the children but to the widows themselves. From available records, many children have benefited from this program and some of the children are now either graduates or well-established in their trades.
Older Widows Mentorship
JoyBearers Organisation through this Scheme makes use of the older and experienced widows to help share experiences in counselling new or fresh widows. This is with the purpose that the conditions they were when they became widows and the achievements they have made now, can also be of help for the new widows to overcome their challenges. The scheme has been of great help in consoling and rehabilitating new widows.
Social support and participation
The social support and participation program of the JoyBearers has yielded much joy to the widows. Members often participate and support social activities of its registered widows. Apart from giving at such ceremonies which usually serve as a moral boost to the concerned widows, members also strive to show their presence at such ceremonies.
Read real - life experiences and discover how we have helped them achieve their goals.
Testimonials & feedbacks
The Widows' Plight
The organisation cares for a special set of people who are vulnerable in any African society. They are often subjected to untold hardship more often than not.
The traditional African set up has some practices and norms which are anti-widows, such practices sometimes include deprivation of access to the husband’s properties, forfeiture of entitlements, which invariably leaves many of the widows poor. Widows are subject to a lot of inhumane treatment. The experiences of widows at the demise of their husbands, that is, what most widows experience amount to subjugation, deprivation and humiliation; especially with some ritual practices that vary from culture to culture.
The philosophy behind these ritual practices is the belief that a widow is considered ritually unclean until the defilement cause by the demise of the husband is removed.
These rituals which are very degrading include the following:
a. Prohibition of bathing, talking etc
b. Sleeping with the corpse of the deceased husband as a symbolic last sexual act
c. Drinking the bath water of the dead husband’s corpse to prove wife’s innocence
d. Shaving of the head and other private parts, and
e. Incarceration for several days or months.
Our organisation has the initiative of standing for and with widows in our society as a pillar of support for them; in some cases, we obtain the services of lawyers to defend them.
The appreciations so far received on the basis of the little things we do as well as the expression of joy and happiness which followed most of our programs, show that if we have more opportunities like the availability and provision of funds, we will be able to help more widows.
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The Widows' Plight
I am 42 years of age, I lost my husband 5 years ago when the eldest of our three children was in SSS 2 and the last born was in JSS 1. It was as if the whole world was against me when the incident, happened. Now two of the children are undergraduates and the burden of taking care of them is becoming too much for me to bear with my salary and the little I collect from our tenants on yearly basis. My problem now is that a man is showing up in my life. He is generous, kind and quite understanding, but, my first son doesn’t want to see him at all. What do I do?
I was happily married to a Dynamic Servant of God. He was a complete husband who understood the principles and aspirations in marriage. I enjoyed him. God allowed him to pass away unto glory about 20 years after our wedding. It was a sorrowful situation. He left three children behind. Based on Biblical injunction, I desire to re-marry since I am still relatively young. I wish to have somebody who is a widower (Christian) and has decided on the issue of child bearing. My children will not oppose this, on the condition that I must not leave their father’s house. This situation is not as easy as stated here. Do you not think I need to fulfill my personal desire and, or at the same time have patience with my children.
Immediately after my husband’s death, I was thrown out with my five female children by his family. They said my children and I were witches. We were denied access to his properties. Today, four of the children are University Graduates and two are planning for their wedding ceremonies. Please, what do I do : at least somebody should represent their father? Left to my children alone, they don’t want to see them.
I am 26 years of age, my husband died few days after I put to bed: our second baby. His mother is still living in our house because he left behind two buildings and 3 cars one for me and two for him. We were both managing his business before his death which makes it easy for me to continue with. He was the only child of the mother, hence, the woman has no other place to go. Our relationship is very cordial but at the same time I have the urge to remarry. Please where do I go?
It was initially a platonic relationship, but, we were later head over heels in love and it led us to the altar. After our National Service, we were lucky to get good jobs through her parents’ connection and the marriage was blessed with two children. Unfortunately, she died while trying to please me. The shock was too much for me to the extent that I almost had a mental problem. During the burial I swore that I would never get married again and that death cannot separate us. Now there is a problem. I see her almost everyday in my dream still acting like my wife in real life. Now, there is a pressure that I should re-marry and I have started to see why it is a must for me. Please, what can I do?
JoyBearers Annual Conference
The Organisation holds annual conferences for widows in the first weekend of every September, each year. The widows’ attendance at such conferences has risen from about 150 participants at its maiden edition to about 400 participants.
The Conferences are usually held free of charge: free feeding and accommodation are usually provided with free transportation fares for Widows from anywhere they attended in Nigeria. It is usually a period of refreshing that widows that have attended look forward to every year.
The meetings afford the opportunity to counsel, motivate, and train the widows on relevant skills and trades that can assist them to cope with loneliness and widowhood challenges as well as improve their standard of living, especially those who do not have any source of livelihood. And it is also an avenue for them to share their experiences and encourage one another.
There are so many testimonials of widows that have been encouraged, healed and helped through such meetings.
Explore our collection showcasing our work, questions, and testimonials.
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