They Killed My Husband, Not My Mind”: Widows Reclaim Hope Through Scarlet Cord Initiative In Southern Kaduna, trauma-healed widows are turning grief into business ideas and resilience into economic power.

​Widows Reclaim Hope Through Scarlet Cord Initiative In Southern Kaduna, trauma-healed widows are turning grief into business ideas and resilience into economic power.

By Justin Jattim 

A non-profit organization dedicated to the empowerment, education, and economic upliftment of vulnerable women and youth impacted by banditry, kidnapping, and insurgency in Nigeria, the Scarlet Cord Initiative, has extended its work to Gumel in Kachia, southern Kaduna. There, it held a two-day holistic empowerment programme for about 100 traumatized women.

The programme included skills training, mentorship, trauma psycho-support, and advocacy. The event, which took place in a vibrant hall in Gora, began with a simple ball of yarn passed from hand to hand, weaving a visible web of connection among the 100 selected widows. These women shared the experience of losing their husbands to violent attacks. This was not a craft lesson, but the opening act of a profound transformation. The "Yarn Coil" exercise, a session of mutual learning, began this two-day journey where widows from the conflict-scarred communities of Awon, Ungwan Bawa, Gadanaji, and Gora learned to weave their grief into enterprise and their resilience into business plans.

The Scarlet Cord Initiative for Women and Youth (SCI), before giving the women "Basic Economy and Financial Literacy Training," first engaged them in a trauma healing session. This was a critical pivot from palliative aid to sustainable empowerment.

For these women, widowhood arrived not from natural causes but from violent attacks, rendering them instantaneously vulnerable—stripped of providers, often of property, and burdened with trauma. The programme’s design acknowledged this stark reality, building upon prior trauma-healing sessions to ensure the business training landed on fertile, healed ground.

Patron of the organisation, Prof. Sunday Agang, urged the women to take every segment of the programme seriously. He expressed gladness with the initiators and noted that, "The trauma freezes one, makes the future a fearful place. Therefore, the need for trauma healing for these women is very important."

The training’s core, led by Lead Facilitator Anzaku Auta and Facilitator Simi Francis, moved from theory to tangible practice. Auta’s sessions on "Personal Entrepreneurial Characteristics (PECs) & Chair Model" reframed each woman as the CEO of her own life. Francis then guided them through generating business ideas and understanding their problem-solving nature. The climax was the Business Idea Design and Prototype session, where abstract hope took physical form.

Earlier, Mercy Anku, who facilitated the programme's pivotal Q&A and Feedback session, stated, "You cannot teach a woman to calculate profit if she is still calculating loss. We healed the heart first to steady the hand that would now sketch a business prototype."

Hadiza Bello from Awon, who lost her farmer husband, held up a detailed diagram for a poultry feed production unit. "They killed my husband, but they did not kill my mind," she stated. "This paper is my first property since he passed. My prototype is my promise to feed my children from my own work, not from pity."

Aisha Ibrahim from Gora shared her plan for packaged groundnut cake. "I always knew how to make it, but I never saw it as a business. This training gave me a new lens. I have designed a plan to supply schools," she said, her voice echoing a newfound identity as an entrepreneur.

Facilitator Simi Francis observed, "Their vulnerability has given them acute insight. Their ideas—from mobile water filtration to seedling nurseries—directly address gaps in their communities. We merely provided the structure to turn their solutions into business plans."

In her remarks, the Executive Director of the Scarlet Cord Initiative for Women and Youth, Esther Moses Badung, articulated the philosophy behind the integrated programme. "People often ask, 'Why both trauma healing and business training?' At Scarlet Cord, we see them as two sides of the same coin. You cannot build a future on a foundation of unaddressed pain," she said. "Our unique approach starts by restoring a person's dignity and agency through psychosocial support. Once that inner footing is secure, the business skills we teach—from the 'Chair Model' of self-leadership to prototype design—have a fertile ground to take root. We are in the business of rebuilding people from the inside out, so their external success is enduring and self-determined."

She further framed the initiative as a strategic investment in community stability. "Aid alone is a sedative; empowerment is the cure. An economically empowered widow educates her children, employs others, and becomes an architect of peace, not a casualty of conflict. This integrated model is the blueprint for sustainable recovery."

The programme, which also included vital sessions on Marketing by Simi Francis and Good Relations & Communication by Teyei Moses, culminated in a document distribution. The real work, however, is just beginning. The challenge of startup capital remains, a point acknowledged by the organizers who announced plans for follow-up mentorship and advocacy to build a more empowered society for the vulnerable.

The programme began with a trauma healing session, Basic Economy and Financial Literacy Training. Out of the 100 widows from Awon, Ungwan Bawa, Gadanaji, and Gora, 82 fully participated in focusing on entrepreneurship on Day 1. Sessions included welcome remarks, mutual learning, Personal Entrepreneurial Characteristics (PECs), business idea generation and screening, problem-solving, marketing, and good relations, facilitated through interactive activities, icebreakers, and breaks. The day was anchored from 8:30 AM to 3:30 PM by the Scarlet Cord team, with sessions led by Anzaku Auta, Simi Francis, Teyei Moses, and Mercy Anku.

Responding to the women's outcry over the lack of humanitarian presence in their communities—while appreciating Scarlet Cord for identifying with them—this news platform observes that humanitarian programmes have not been reaching these communities. The Executive Director of Scarlet Cord stated that their organisation is open to partnership to ensure humanitarian assistance is truly felt on the ground. She called on trauma-healing organizations and empowerment-based partners to come to the aid of the people in these communities, as there are many more with dependents and little or no means to cater for them.

Godiya Samaila, a participant, shared: "My husband was a woodcutting machine operator, a very gentle man who could not hurt a fly. He was matcheted and killed with a cutlass, along with my son, who has also left a young widow at home, leaving me and my daughter-in-law in widowhood."

Martina Bulus narrated how her husband was killed, after which her son—for whom the father had sourced school fees to send to school—was also found dead days later.

A young widow said,

“I am a widow at 23 with three children. My education stopped in secondary school for lack of sponsorship. My wish is to return to school and become a nurse. I call on humanitarian bodies, faith-based groups, and education organizations to partner with Scarlet Cord to make this possible—not just for me, but for every young widow dreaming of a future. Support our education, empower our skills, and walk with us as we rebuild our lives.”