Supporting Women Through Life - Widows Pension Initiative

2 years ago me and Lucy had the pleasure of meeting Deepu and Mara. Deepu is a Brahmin (priest) who has lived in Pushkar his whole life. Mara is an incredibly interesting Italian lady that has been visiting Pushkar for 20 years. 10 years ago they met and began doing some remarkable things for the benefit of the local community in Pushkar. They founded the Fior Di Loto foundation which primarily supports local young under-privileged girls in Pushkar by providing education, school uniform, transport and food for school. We have supported this project over Black Friday for the last 2 years, sending 36 girls and 90 girls to school in 2018 and 2019 respectively.

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We've added the totals up... all your sales, the direct donations page, our Brighton Store sales, PLUS the bonus sponsorships from our featured products... and a mindblowing total of NINETY girls will be getting the life changing opportunity this year to go to school 💥💥💥 ⠀ ⠀ We were gobsmacked even to double last year's total of 36, so this is REALLY special. We're completely blown away by all your support, the kind comments, everyone who shared our initiative, and every one of you who forfeited the usual big discounts of the weekend or donated directly in order to make a really positive change to so many lives. ⠀ ⠀ We're absolutely thrilled and really excited to be able to send over the money to Deepu and Mara next week and have no doubt that the impact on the girls, the school and the whole community will be huge, immediate, tangible AND long-lasting. 🙏💪

A post shared by Lucy & Yak (@lucyandyak) on Dec 3, 2019 at 4:51am PST

Another amazing project that Deepu and Mara work on is providing a pension for widows in the Pushkar area in rural Rajasthan. India is a massive country with a population of 1.3 billion…. 20 times the size of the UK. Because of the size India is still working hard to provide the social care that many of it’s citizens need especially in more rural areas like Pushkar, Rajasthan. The current government is putting much emphasis on social care but when a country is this size it takes a long time!

Further to this, Indians in rural areas tend to rely more on the family than on the state for financial support. Which means when the family structure is not there some people find it difficult to make ends meet.

This is where Fior Di Loto steps in. They now work with 32 widows who receive a small state pension of 500 rupees per month…. A little over £5 per month to live on. Deepu and Mara add 400 rupees per month to this and provide food hampers with basic ingredients so that these widows stand a chance at independence and some basics by which to live.

It’s not a lot, but it’s something. In india, £10 per month and food support can be made to go a long way and every little helps when someone is in need of support.

Me and Lucy have wanted to add to the support we give the school and finally we’re in a position to help Deepu and Mara fund the widows pensions for a year. From the 26th to the 28th of December 2019 we will be giving 5% of all sales to Fior Di Loto so that they can fund 32 widows for the whole of 2020. Life is tough for many millions of people all across the world, even in developed countries. In India a few £ can go a long way and we think it’s important to support the wider community of areas in which we have factories.

Thank you once again for your support, we all really are making a small difference to a few peoples’ lives. If we all made a small difference to a few people, imagine the world we would have!!