Cherie Blair, the 56-year-old former first lady of Britain, practicing lawyer and mother of four, doesn't consider herself a "superwoman."

That is a title she reserves for her mother - a single mother with little education and even fewer means, who raised two daughters. And she reserves it, too, for the women she has met in her work as president of Loomba Trust, a charity that supports widows and their children in developing countries.

There is so often a stigma against widows in the developing world. Their property is taken away by their husbands' families, they are forced into prostitution to survive and their children are also forced to leave school to work.

Mrs. Blair is pushing hard to change that. She is working at having the United Nations to recognize June 23 as International Widows Day as way of providing a focal point for the plight of widows.

"I think of my Mom and realize how lucky I am," Mrs. Blair told The Globe in an interview this week. "I think actually of the women I've now met like the widows across the world who through the sheer force of their determination to make sure that they survive and that their children survive ... really we have it easier than in comparison."

On Monday night, she was in Toronto speaking at a dinner to launch the Canadian chapter of Loomba. Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla is helping her out. Ms. Dhalla put the dinner together, acting as co-host along with former New Brunswick Liberal premier Frank McKenna, now the deputy chairman of TD Financial Group.

"When I see young woman like Ruby who have done so fantastically well ... I always think of those wonderful Famous Five," Mrs. Blair said, referencing the statue she visited on Parliament Hill in 2001 with her husband.

"Those five women who all those years ago in the late 1920s took their case right up to the Privy Council in London, challenging the assumption that under the law women were not persons."

On Thursday, Mrs. Blair will be in Washington where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will join her in launching the "mWomen Initiative," which is a joint project with the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women.

Her latest endeavour will put mobile phones in hands of women in developing countries as a way to promote empowerment in business, health and other areas.

Coming Saturday in Focus: Sonia Verma talks to Cherie Blair about contraception, careers and boar hunting at midnight with Vladamir Putin.