… Empowers some others
Healing Heart Foundation Saturday fetes and distributed food items ranging from rice, beans and garri to over 600 widows in Lagos as part of its year support to help alleviate the plight of the widows in Lagos
Also distributed to the widows are plastic basins, and food seasonings.
The widows drawn from different parts of Lagos expressed appreciation to the President/ Founder of the Foundation, Evangelist Sophie Mbanisi for always catering for their needs.
Speaking during the programme, the special guest of honour, and Deputy Women Leader of APC Lagos State, Hon. Kehinde Babalola Ajini lauded the Foundation for always catering for the widows.
She encouraged the widows to always trust in God and be steadfast in all their dealings, assuring them that they will surely overcome.
She gave the example of her mother who became a window at a very young age, but was able to overcome the challenges and to raise her children before dying around the age of 86 years.
Speaking also, the President/Founder of the Healing Heart Foundation, Evangelist Mbanisi, disclosed that over 600 widows benefitted from this year for the foods and gift items distribution.
She stated that the Foundation adopted a window to help her overcome challenges of life and also empowered three other widows to start up small businesses.
She said: “Every year, we are growing , we are hitting about 800 before, that was about 5 years ago, so we stopped sharing our fliers , because when we budget for 500 and 800- 900 will come, it will cut down on what our regular members will get , so we stopped given out the dates of our programme.
The ones you see here are mostly our members because we meet every last Friday of the month, but upon that this crowd still came , from the registration, they said over 600, but am not sure of the exact numbers”.
She explained further that : “When the end of the year was approaching and we did our letters,and I said no matter the situation we must do something, but the way God answered us, is not like we have many new sponsors, although we still have some new ones, but the old ones know how hard the economy was and that made them to beef up their givings and it helped us a lot. Today a bag of rice is 80 something to 90 something thousand naira, is not a child play, even if you give them 10kg or one paint of rice each, you will find out that one bag of rice will only serve 12 people then times 12 people by the numbers we expected, we budgeted 500 people and you will now know how many bags of rice that will be. Beans is about 100 and something thousand naira per bag and garri is about 40 seven thousand naira per bag, but we were not deterred, we said at all, at all is bad, so we decided to do these three major staple food, garri, rice and beans, we have seasonings , salt and ingredients one can use to make a meal, thanks to the finance we got, and products we got from our sponsors”.
She stated further that the widows are grateful for the little they were able to provide for them .
In her words: “Last year we gave out wrappers, but because of the state of the economy this year, we couldn’t do that this year, but we gave wrappers for the awards we are given this year for most outstanding zones, we gave some people money to start business, what we are doing this year is plastics, sometimes you see in the homes that is very old and broken buckets, they are still using them, every year we look at items used in the homes that may be worn out, so this year we brought beautiful basins as gift items to go with the food items”.
She stated that this year the Foundation gave three people money to start up business, including the zones that did well.
Mbanisi said the person relocating permanently to the East was given ₦60,000 for her transport, while the one who said she want to start Akara business, was given ₦30,000 she requested for to start the business and buy stuff for it.
“The pots we still do that for her, the one that is doing fruit business, we gave ₦30,000 to add and another one doing plantain business, we gave her ₦80,000 and have gotten a place for her in Oshodi market, she has even started that business already, we just adopted a widow now, she was just a pitiable sight, we might not give her everything , but she’s surviving now, so whatever we add eases off tension in her,
there is another childless widow we also adopted”, Evangelist Mbanisi further explained .
She advised the Healing Heart Foundation members to always trust in God, stressing that there is nothing without God.
According to her, “let their trust be in God and not man, we keep telling them to stop going from place to place looking for help. Like the widow we adopted here today, when she was coming here, she didn’t know something like this will happen, whatever we give her in a month, is a step up from where she was, people should put their trust in God and as their source because he has said he’s the husband of the widows, so if he has said that, God doesn’t fail, he will take care of them, by the time you know it, they will be in America, going for omugwo, like one from my village, they said it in our platform that she’s in Canada, is God that can do that . For my mother inlaw , we were nothing and had nothing and it was tough, because she was the second wife, but before she died, she will sit down and supervise where they are killing two cows and she now start giving out, there is joy in that and is when we trust God that he will now turn situations around for us and people will now start commenting, but it can only be the hand of God”.
She lauded the sponsors of the programme who contributed money, products and other forms of support, like Tiger Foods, Raymond Obieri Foundation, Erisco Foods, Ajinomoto, Banex Group, Promasidor Foods, Nestle, Bozac, Fair Deal Continental Limited, Royal Salt, Blue Moon Hotel, Krisoral & Company Limited, Glemco, Chuvie Decor among others.
The programme also included free eye test and treatment among others.
