Education

When it was first established in 1997, the focus of the Loomba Foundation’s aid effort was on educating the children of poor widows in India - and even if today the organisation’s scope is global and its activities span a wide range, education continues to be a crucial factor in breaking the cycle of deprivation that is so often set in train by widowhood.

The Loomba Foundation’s focus on education has its roots in the vision of Shrimata Pushpa Wati Loomba, mother of the charity’s founder, Lord Loomba, who on becoming a widow at the age of 37 devoted her life to ensuring that her seven children received a proper education. Realising how important this had been in his own life, Lord Loomba later realised that few of India's poor widows had the opportunity to do what his mother had done and so the charity was established in her honour with the initial target of educating at least 100 children in each of India's 29 States.

Within a decade, that target had been exceeded: by 2006 the Loomba Foundation was educating 3,500 children of poor widows in India.

Education also features in our work in other countries. In South Africa, for example, our community-based project, launched in 2006, in partnership with Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Unite charity, has benefited 1,500 HIV orphans in townships outside Johannesburg.

Loomba Foundation beneficiaries – who are selected without regard to race, religion or gender – receive a scholarship for a complete education, with guaranteed funds for a period of five years. Today many Loomba Foundation scholars have completed their education and have moved on to skilled employment or further education. More than 2,000 children are currently being educated by the Foundation in India. All donations received for the education of these children are applied wholly to the cost of their education and £100 pays to educate one child in India for a whole year.