The Lotus Flower Women’s Business Incubator (WBI) provides a financial foundation and business mentorship for women-led small businesses. In addition, our women’s centre will host educational sessions on gender-based violence and women’s legal rights.

What started as a small project, utilising the talents of a few skilled bakers amongst the women is going to develop into a longer term cafe project, to build a more extensive community space that will help foster relationships, confidence and community spirit.

First launched as a pilot in Spring 2019, the Lotus Flower’s Storytelling Sisters project provides an educational platform for local women to learn a combination of photography and creative writing skills, enabling them to share their experiences through photos and stories. The project aims to provide marketable skills and facilitate improved mental health outcomes through shared experiences and community support.

We want to teach women to sew and weave in order to learn the skills to earn a living one-day to support themselves and their families.The Lotus Flower will be working with Yazidi women in Kurdistan region of Iraq. The atrocities Yazidi women have faced hit the headlines in August 2014, and are still doing so today.

In July 2019, we launched the Lotus Flower Café with the support of Asma Khan, founder of Darjeeling Express, in Essyan Camp, which is home to almost 15,000 displaced individuals.

The Lotus Flower will soon be launching our new livelihood programme, Hairdressing Sisters, to further economic and employment opportunities for displaced women in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

The majority of camp residents are Yezidi and have a farming background that spans generations. As the women’s centre includes a plot of unused land, we wanted to facilitate an opportunity for women to use skills that have been taught to them by their ancestors while also providing an income to support their families. The women have recently started to garden and plant seasonal vegetables.