The Lotus Flower

Since the Lotus Flower was founded in 2016, we have experienced huge growth in our range of activities and projects, and to date have directly impacted on more than 30,000 women and girls – all with a minimal budget. However, our current priority is to focus on organisational development and sustainability, so that we can grow over the coming years.

Our work to date has only been possible because we have been largely dependent on pro-bono and in-kind support, as well as volunteers and staff receiving minimal salaries. Although we are proud of our team, who are highly committed to our cause, we urgently require significant funding to help us meet our organisation's core critical demands.

We also have ambitious plans to scale, by increasing the number of women's centres we run, and the number of beneficiaries we reach. In order to do this we are aiming for a fundraising target of £1million, which will allow us to continue our existing projects, pay staff a fair wage, increase recruitment and focus on innovation to meet the challenges and demands of the post-pandemic world. 

This funding will help us manage current workloads, achieve optimum outcomes, practice, stronger leadership and greater sustainability.

The Lotus Flower is a small NGO which was founded by genocide survivor Taban Shoresh in 2016. She lived through Saddam Hussein's regime as a child growing up in Iraq, and was inspired to start the Lotus Flower after seeing ISIS wage another genocide in her homeland in 2014.

The Lotus Flower runs three women’s centres for IDPs and refugees in Kurdistan, Iraq. The centres provide a safe and supportive environments for women and girl survivors, filling resource gaps by providing community-responsive programming. Programmes are based around six pillars from the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development Goals: Education, Livelihoods, Mental Health, Wellbeing, Human Rights and Peacebuilding. To date, this has included much-needed livelihood training, language courses, computer training, mental health support, fitness and health training, and awareness sessions and advocacy on women's rights and GBV. 

Our purpose is to provide a foundation for women to rebuild themselves, their families and their futures, and we strive for a world where they are safe from violence, free to access education and empowered to participate in their communities to drive social and economic change. 

As local implementers, we work at grassroots level and listen to the local community, employing local women to run programmes.

Years of conflict mean refugees and IDPs in Kurdistan remain vulnerable, with a lack of specialised services and few livelihoods programmes or GBV protection services. Although many women are now sole earners for their families, the majority have had limited roles in their community, and suffer heightened risks of rape, slavery, trafficking, forced marriage and GBV. There is also little access to services such as mental health counselling and referrals for specialised services. Cases of depression and suicide continue to rise, highlighting a desperate need for psychosocial services tailored for women and girls.  

The pandemic has added another dimension of livelihood destruction, and, as our own Covid-19 assessment and needs study showed, increased violence against women. Compounding the situation, government-enforced lockdowns meant that NGOs were prevented from accessing camps to provide essential services during much of 2020.

We tackle these issues in many ways, by providing six programme pillars that aligns with the the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development Goals: Education, Livelihoods, Mental Health, Wellbeing, Human Rights and Peacebuilding. Our support includes: awareness sessions on issues such as GBV and human rights; mental health counselling with a psychologist; legal support; educational and livelihoods training plus support and mentorship for women-led businesses. 

Because we are lean, we are able to pivot fast and react according to specific needs of the moment. We innovate with and for women and girls to accelerate positive change, and crucially, we do not create projects based on what we assume they need, but on what they tell us they need. We also employ local women and girls to implement our programming. Because the women lead our discussions, they are empowered to tell us what they want, and we simply facilitate their ambitions.

Our strategy during the Covid-19 pandemic was especially innovative, as we shifted much of our support for women and girls to remote and online delivery. With in-person contact severely restricted as a result of the virus, we began providing access to a psychologist over the phone, Viber and WhatsApp. Awareness sessions on GBV and early marriage also shifted to remote delivery, along with language and literacy classes, allowing us to reach nearly 200 people every day during Covid’s first wave. This proved an extremely successful and popular innovation, especially as Covid-19 increased the sense of isolation for many women and girls in the camps – as well as their struggles with mental health and GBV.

We are having a positive impact on humanity because our projects are empowering women and girls, enabling them to improve their own lives, break down traditional barriers and contribute to lasting change.

To date, we have positively impacted on more than 30,000 women and girl conflict survivors, and our work is underpinned by the belief that by becoming income-earners and leaders of their community, they can disrupt existing social structures and take on decision-making roles which will benefit all mankind.

Finding a voice – often for the first time in their life - and acting on their needs in developing solutions also dramatically improves women and girls' chances of securing sustainable futures, which again, benefits humanity on a far wider scale.

We continually assess our impact, and work under the principles of 'Do No Harm'. Upon completion of successful projects and M&E procedures, we work to replicate and grow their impact in subsequent iterations. For instance, in 2017 the total number of beneficiaries across our programming was 1,867. In 2019 the total number of beneficiaries was 11,664 (an increase of more than 500% in three years). We also scale up by increasing staffing numbers for projects where needed.