Susan Retik (left) and Patti Quigley (right) in Kabul, Afghanistan, meeting with a woman whose husband was killed during the country’s civil war.

When Susan Retik and Patti Quigley lost their husbands to the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001, the two Boston women, both pregnant at the time, grieved even as they received an outpouring of financial and emotional support.

One day after Retik saw a TV show about Afghan women, she and Quigley realized that they were lucky compared to the one million Afghan women who had been widowed over more than two decades of conflict. The two women were aware that they had received a great deal of support from their family and community, whereas the Afghan women were left without even the means to support their children. The two widows decided to share the monies they had received with the war widows in Afghanistan.

Thus, in 2003 they established Beyond the 11th, a non-profit foundation to aid widows in areas touched by conflict. Each of the two women made a substantial personal contribution, and to raise more money they organized a bicycle tour from Ground Zero in New York to Boston.

To date, Beyond the 11th has contributed approximately US$170,000 to income-generating programs run by CARE International. They have also contributed to Women for Women International and to Arzu Rugs, a program that teaches Afghan women to weave rugs. This program has been able to help nearly 2,500 women so far.

“Our goal is to help a woman become self-sufficient so she can give to her children what she didn’t have for herself,” Retik says.

A new documentary movie about their story, Beyond Belief, has been released recently.

Sources:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0531/p13s02-lifp.html http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0512-06.htm

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