The Lotus Flower was thrilled to give leading restaurateur Asma Khan and human rights lawyer Baroness Helena Kennedy a rare close-up on our work with displaced women and girl conflict survivors.
During a trip to one of our centres in Kurdistan, Baroness Helena and TV star Asma were visibly moved to see the progress being made by females whose lives were shattered by ISIS during the attacks of 2014.
With their visit captured in a poignant video filmed and directed by Alex Daniels, the pair witnessed a range of our projects taking place – all aimed at helping women and girls rebuild their lives after losing their homes, livelihoods and loved ones.
As star of hit Netflix show Chef’s Table, Asma was on hand to officially open the inaugural Lotus Flower Café – a pioneering women-run enterprise where they can cook and sell healthy, high-quality food, and meet friends in a safe space.
“It’s incredible,” said Asma. “This café is so important – it allows these women to build bridges through food, it gives them the tools to be independent. After everything they’ve been through, this is the first door to freedom.”
During their visit, which took place well before the Coronavirus outbreak, Lotus Flower founder Taban Shoresh showed Asma and Baroness Helena other livelihoods and wellbeing projects, such as Boxing Sisters – in which women and girls learn self-defence to improve their confidence and ease past trauma.
Baroness Helena, one of the UK’s most influential human rights advocates, said: “The Lotus Flower is running projects which are essentially about letting these women heal. It’s about learning literacy skills, reading and writing… and classes about how to become entrepreneurs.”
While both Asma and Baroness Helena were impressed by the impact we have now had on more than 25,000 women and girls, we still need to do much more. With Covid-19 causing a fresh crisis in our centres and the camps, we desperately need to raise funds to continue our work and protect those we support.
Please donate whatever you can at justgiving.com/thelotusflower. Just £75 can support one woman or girl for a whole year, so please give generously and help thousands more survivors get back on their feet...
Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD4asBjacKw.
Credits: Produced by AJ Esquire Productions. Filmed and Directed by Alex Daniels. Edited by Ruairi Dunne and James Burt.