Help us empower poor widows in India
Help us empower poor widows in India
Help us empower poor widows in India
Help us empower poor widows in India
Shrimati Pushpa Wati Loomba
The Loomba Foundation is a UN-accredited NGO, established in 1997 and registered in both the UK and India, dedicated to supporting disadvantaged widows and their families and ending the discrimination widows face worldwide.
Our mission is rooted in a personal story. In 1954, in the town of Dhilwan in northern India, Pushpa Wati Loomba was widowed at 37 and immediately subjected to traditional customs that stripped her of dignity and hope. Her ten-year-old son, Raj, witnessed the abrupt transformation of his mother’s life and the deep injustices widows routinely endured. Years later, at his own wedding, Raj was confronted again with the prejudice directed at widows when his mother was asked to step away from the altar.
When Pushpa Wati passed away in 1992, Raj resolved to honour her legacy by challenging the stigma that blights the lives of millions. Together with his wife, Veena, he founded the Shrimati Pushpa Wati Loomba Trust – now The Loomba Foundation – to support widows and their children and to change the culture that discriminates against them.
From the outset, the Foundation has combined practical empowerment programmes with advocacy at the highest levels, engaging governments, industry and civil society. Today, The Loomba Foundation continues its global work to ensure that every widow can live with dignity, opportunity and justice.
Prime Minister Tony Blair and Raj Loomba at the official launch of the charity in 1998
The Loomba Foundation was established in the UK by Raj and Veena Loomba by a charitable Trust Deed on 26 June 1997 and has a sister charity registered in India.
The Foundation was officially launched in London on 25 March 1998, in the presence of the Prime Minister, The Rt. Hon. Sir Tony Blair and his wife Cherie Blair CBE KC. The Foundation also received the support of the Honourable Prime Minister of India, Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee, who inaugurated the Foundation in New Delhi on 31 March 1999, by lighting a ceremonial lamp at his official residence.
The Loomba Foundation was also officially launched in Scotland in 2003, in the USA in 2005, in South Africa in 2006, in Kenya and Rwanda in 2008 and in Canada in 2009.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, Mrs Cherie Blair and Lord Raj Loomba at the United Nations in New York, 2010.
The Loomba Foundation, an UN accredited global charitable organisation is in consultative status with the United Nations’ Economic and Social Council.
Lord Raj Loomba CBE, Founder and Chairman Trustee of The Loomba Foundation, launched International Widows Day, which takes place every year on 23 June, to highlight the plight of widows and their children all over the world and it provides a focus for effective action by the national governments and NGO’s. It was announced at the House of Lords in the UK in 2005. We are proud that through our tireless campaign over five years, the United Nations adopted 23rd June as UN International Widows Day at its 65th General Assembly in New York in 2010.
23 June was chosen as the date for International Widows Day because it was on that day in 1954 that Shrimati Pushpa Wati Loomba had become a widow in Punjab in India.
The Loomba Foundation’s International Widows Conference at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London, 23 June 2025
The Loomba Foundation is committed to educating children of poor widows, empowering impoverished widows to become self-reliant, advocating for their fundamental and human rights around the world, and promoting research to underpin evidence-based policy progress.
To find out more, click on the links below:
Educating children of poor widows