Counseling and small business support services are helping widows of Timor-Leste’s 2006 crisis recover from their grief and find jobs to support their families.

Jacinta da Costa, 40, lost her husband to skirmishes between the police and military that broke out in May 2006. Without any outside support, she had no idea how she would be able to care for her children or come to terms with the death of her husband, a soldier in the military. But in a little more than a year, da Costa was able to open a restaurant near a military compound in Baucau. These days, by preparing lunch and dinner for soldiers, she makes enough money to feed her four children and keep them in school.

Da Costa points to the intervention of the Alola Foundation, a local group that provides support services to women and children, for having helped her move on. “I could not have accomplished this much without Alola’s help,” she says.

With support from USAID’s Small Grants Program, Alola provided counseling and other support services to 25 widows of soldiers and police officers who were killed in the violence that broke out in early 2006. The Foundation began its efforts soon after in April 2006 by helping identify the widows’ basic needs, lobbying the Government for more support, and bringing the widows together once a month to help them work through their grief.

As the recovery process continued, however, the Foundation realized that the women also needed practical support in identifying sustainable sources of income. In early 2007, Alola started to shift its focus and began training da Costa and other interested women on basic business and money management skills.

The training helped prepare da Costa for the challenges of opening a small restaurant last August. Alola helped pay for most of the restaurant’s startup costs, augmenting the funds that da Costa had from her husband’s pension. To limit the cost of supplies, Alola linked the widow a local NGO Hasatil, which allowed da Costa to start her own vegetable garden with seeds provided by the Ministry of Agriculture.

Of course, it will all be up to da Costa now to make sure that the customers keep coming, and that’s exactly what she intends to do. She is now a real businesswoman, after all.