It started with one term of school fees.

Wings for Life did not begin with a plan. It began with a close friend who had just lost her husband.

I went to be with her — not to fix anything, just to be in the room. I kept going back. What I saw over the months that followed is the reason this organisation exists.

For a week the house is full. People bring food, they sit, they weep with her. The second week is quieter. By the second month she is alone at the table with the paperwork, and everyone has quietly agreed she should manage from here.

I watched a sharp, capable woman be slowly written out of her own life: the bank account she was locked out of, the lease in his name, the school that needed a signature she was no longer allowed to give. Then I noticed it happening to a neighbour, and to women at my church. It was never dramatic. It was just constant.

Her son was about to leave school the same year his father died. I paid one term of his fees so he could stay.

It was a small thing. But I could not accept that a bright child should lose his future because of a death he did not cause. That single term was the whole of Wings for Life at the start.

Another widow heard and asked for help. Then a third. None of them wanted charity. They wanted a way back to earning, and a community that would still be there after the first month.

So we built one together: school sponsorship for the children, training in a real trade, and seed capital to start a business — with mentorship at every step.

The widows in our network know things I never could: what the first week really needs, which offices to visit and in what order, what it costs a grieving woman just to ask for help.

That knowledge is the heart of this work. They shape the programmes, mentor the women who come after them, and decide what support actually looks like.

I haven't walked this road myself, so I listen first. My job is to keep the doors open, find the resources, and make sure no woman has to face the months after a funeral alone.

We relate. We understand. We listen. We care. And most of that “we” is them.