THE NATIONAL WIDOWS ASSOCIATION

There are 258 million widows worldwide. Nearly half of them fall into poverty the moment their husband dies.

In much of the world, a woman doesn't only lose her husband. Within a month, she can lose her income, her home, and her standing in a community that no longer knows what to do with her. She is grieving and negotiating survival at the same time.

In the United States, 2,800 women become widows every single day. Most churches don't have a widows ministry at all. Most widows are suffering in plain sight.

And here's the part almost nobody funds.

Everyone shows up for the funeral. The food stops after two weeks. The calls stop after a month. Month three is when she's alone in a house she may not be able to keep, with paperwork nobody explained, facing a life she has to rebuild from the studs—and by then everyone has gone home.

Month three is where we work.

WHAT WE DO

The National Widows Association has served widows worldwide since 2019. Our team is made up of widows and widowers, and our job is to connect, comfort, and catapult.

We run monthly support groups and community circles. Life classes, coaching, and retooling for women rebuilding their working lives. Help navigating the insurance and benefits nobody told her she qualified for. Homes built for widows in Africa and the Philippines. A widows curriculum any church can run without us, because this shouldn't depend on us. And The First 72 Hours: A Faithful Guide for Widows — free, printable, no email required, because a woman three days into the worst week of her life shouldn't have to give you her contact information to get help.

We don't tell widows to move on. Nobody moves on. We help them move forward.

THIS CAMPAIGN

We are placing 5,000 copies of The Widow's Might — written by our founder, Darlyn C. Turner — directly into the hands of 5,000 widows. Nearly 2,000 of them in Kenya. More in the Philippines. And widows here at home who haven't been handed anything since the funeral.

The books are given. No widow pays. No one asks the recipient for anything in return.

The book is often how she finds the door. What's behind the door is the part we actually do.

*$25 puts one book in one widow's hands, delivered. (including shipping and admin) *costs have recently gone up $5

$25 — one widow

$125 — five widows

$250 — ten widows

$625 — one widows' fellowship group

$2,500 — one hundred widows; a congregation or village

$12,500 — five hundred widows; a full country delegation

ABOUT OUR WIDOWS - AN HONEST NOTE

If you watch the women in our films, you'll notice something: they're strong. They're articulate. Several of them are funny.

That's not an accident, and we want to be honest about it. The women who agreed to sit in front of a camera are the ones who have arrived somewhere. They're further along. They can talk about it now.

The widow your gift is for is not in those videos.

She's three weeks in. She isn't answering her phone. She wouldn't sit for an interview, and we would never ask her to.

The women who did speak are the proof that she gets there.

WHAT WE WON'T DO

We don't photograph grieving widows to raise money.

In a sector that runs on images of people at their lowest, we've decided the woman receiving help matters more than the picture of her receiving it. No image of a recipient is used without her prior written consent, in her own language. That applies to our staff, our volunteers, and every partner organization distributing on our behalf.

Widows are not content.

What we'll send you instead

We'll tell you when the books are ordered and when they ship. We'll report back on where they went, how many women received them, and what came of it. You'll hear stories from women who choose to tell them — and nothing taken from someone who didn't.

And if we fall short of 5,000, we'll tell you that too, and tell you exactly what we did with your money.

One necessary note: gifts support the program as a whole and cannot be directed to a specific named individual. We make the recipient decisions. That protects your charitable deduction — and it protects the women, who should never have to compete for a sponsor.

Right now, a widow doesn't know that a stranger decided she was worth remembering.

Be that stranger.

#WidowsMatter