The Hindu : Front Page : Cherie Blair pitches in for children of widows

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Monday, Jan 14, 2008
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Cherie Blair pitches in for children of widows

Kunal Diwan

The 10-year-old Loomba Trust aims to educate such kids

Corporate houses must fulfil their social responsibilities: Vayalar Ravi
About 40 children on the Trust’s scholarships attended the event

— Photo: S. Subramanium

Cherie Blair, president, Loomba Trust, seen with the beneficiaries at a seminar in New Delhi on Sunday.

NEW DELHI: The great and the good of politics and business were out in force here on Sunday as Cherie Blair, wife of the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, urged corporations to support the Loomba Trust, an Anglo-Indian charity set up to educate the children of widows.

Ms. Blair and Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi were speaking at an event organised to mark the 10th anniversary of the Trust’s foundation. “Corporate houses in India must come forward and fulfil their social responsibilities,” Mr. Ravi said.

Mr. Raj Loomba, the non-resident Indian businessman who set up the trust in memory of his mother, a widow, echoed the Minister’s call. Citing a British industrialist, who had donated Rs.6 lakh to the Trust, he asked: “If foreign corporations can do it [support charities], why not Indian ones?”

But while acknowledging that the 3,600 children educated by the Trust so far was “only a drop in the ocean” — there are three-crore widows in India and 10-crore worldwide — Ms. Blair, the Trust’s president, praised the work of Mr. Loomba.

The Trust raised more than Rs.40 lakh last year, she said, and used it to offer five-year scholarships to children in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh as well as Kenya.

About 40 children on the Trust’s scholarships attended the event. “The charity has made every bit of difference to these children, who now want to be doctors, lawyers and engineers,” said Ms. Blair, herself a senior barrister.

“Widows are seen as evil in India and have to depend on their children as bread-winners,” the mother of four added, before revealing she was drawn to the Trust, as, like Mr. Loomba, she was raised by her mother alone.

The Trust was established in the U.K., with the aim of educating 100 children of widows in each Indian State. The target was met for the first time last year, but Mr. Loomba has now announced plans for the Trust’s expansion.

In a joint venture with Richard Branson, another celebrity Loomba trustee, it will fund the education of 1,500 South African children left fatherless by HIV/AIDS. The Trust will also set up a school in Mr. Loomba’s ancestral village in Punjab.

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