WHO WE ARE
Women-Led. Locally Rooted. Evidence-Based.
We know that changing a woman’s story can change the world.
From Crisis Response to Sustainable Change
The Lotus Flower was founded in March 2016 in direct response to the 2014 ISIS attacks on the Yazidi community in northern Iraq, one of the most devastating humanitarian crises in the region's recent history.
Nearly a decade later, we operate across the Kurdistan Region of Iraq with 120 locally hired staff, eight permanent women's centres, and fifteen mobile teams. Our programmes have reached over 115,000 women, girls, and community members. We've built trusted partnerships with UNHCR, UN Women, CARE International, GIZ, BMZ, and other leading humanitarian organisations.
Our founder, Taban Shoresh OBE, has lived experience of conflict and displacement. She always believed women and girls affected by conflict need more than emergency relief. They need sustained, holistic support that addresses the full range of barriers they face and places them at the centre of their own recovery. [Read Taban's full story]
When the 2024 funding crisis led to the phase-out of hundreds of NGOs across the region, we maintained our operations and expanded. We're here for the long term.
Why the Lotus Flower?
"The lotus flower is resilient and strong. It grows its roots in muddy water and blossoms into something incredibly beautiful. Our name was chosen to represent the amazing women and girls we work with who move through their struggles and rise up and bloom in some of the world's harshest environments."
- Taban Shoresh OBE, Founder
The women in our programmes have navigated conflict, displacement, loss, and systemic inequality. The Lotus Flower provides them with the spaces of safety, skills, and holistic support so that they can start rebuilding their lives and shaping their futures. In doing so, they grow businesses, raise resilient families, advocate for their rights, and shape the communities around them.
How We Operate
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Community Trust
Effective programming in conflict-affected communities depends on trust earned over time through consistent presence and cultural alignment. Our staff are locally hired, many with their own experience of displacement. Our programmes are designed in response to what communities tell us they need.
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Dignity and Agency
We design every programme around the principle that the women we work with are not passive recipients of assistance; they are the primary agents of their own futures. Our role is to provide the tools, spaces of safety, and support structures that enable them to exercise that agency. This shapes how we communicate, how we collect data, and how we deliver services.
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Sustainable Empowerment
Short-term intervention without long-term investment does not produce durable change. We invest in organisational infrastructure, local staff development, systems strengthening, and multi-year programming. Sustainability is an operational standard.
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Evidence-Led Advocacy
We use our proximity to communities and our decade of operational experience to inform and influence policy at a national level and at international forums including the Global Refugee Forum, the UN Commission on the Status of Women, and UNHCR Global Consultations. For example, when we identify emerging threats, such as technology-facilitated gender-based violence or regressive legislative change, we respond through targeted advocacy grounded in our local insights.
These principles run through five interconnected programmatic pillars: Education & Livelihoods, Health & Safety, Climate Change, Peacebuilding & Human Rights, and Organisational Sustainability.
Work With Us
The Lotus Flower is a registered charity in Kurdistan, Iraq and England & Wales. We work with institutional donors, private foundations, corporate partners, and individual supporters who share our commitment to locally led, women-centred programming.
If you are a funder, we welcome conversations about multi-year, flexible support that enables us to maintain the quality and continuity our communities depend on.
If you are an organisation working in the MENA region, we are open to partnerships built on genuine collaboration, shared accountability, and mutual respect for local knowledge.
If you are an individual who wants to contribute, your support directly funds the infrastructure - the staff, the centres, the systems - that makes our programmes possible.
The work is long term. The need is real. And the evidence, after nearly a decade, is clear: when women are resourced and trusted to lead, they do.