Sisters' Stories: How education gave Ghazal hope for the future

Our regular ‘Sisters’ Stories’ series focuses on the achievements and often life-changing moments experienced by many of the women and girls we support.

This week, we’d like you to meet Ghazal, a 34-year-old mother from Sinjar. After being displaced across Kurdistan for many years, she arrived in camp in 2019, and like so many other women, found her new life very hard to adapt to.

Knowing few people and with little opportunity available to her or her children, Ghazal felt the future looked bleak for her family. However, she then heard about the Lotus Flower’s programmes, and signed up to several of our classes, including English language, women’s sports and literacy – in which she has learned to read and write for the first time in her life.

“It has been an amazing thing for me,” she says. “Through the Lotus Flower centre I have been able to meet other women and girls and take part in many classes. I especially enjoy learning English language, as it helps me develop and acquire new words and learn about letters.”

These sessions have been especially empowering for Ghazal, as she had no formal education and was illiterate as a child. But with her newly developed skills, she can now ensure her own children have brighter prospects.

“Now I can help my children in school. I can teach them and help them with their homework. My hope is that they will be able to go to university and have the kind of chances that I never had.”

However, Ghazal is also hoping to continue her own educational growth, too. “I want to learn other languages too eventually,” she says.

With continued support and investment in these kinds of educational and livelihoods projects, we believe there’s no reason why Ghazal - and so many other women like her - can’t go on to achieve any of their personal goals…