Our Programs

Lotus Outreach Australia works in partnership with respected local agencies to fund practical programs in education, vocational training, health care, counselling and advocacy of the rights of women and children.

Girls Access to Education

educational opportunities for 150 Cambodian girls

In partnership with the Cambodian Women's Crisis Centre (CWCC), Lotus Outreach Australia is supporting 150 girls in Siem Reap province through the Girls' Access to Education (GAE) program. GAE helps prevent trafficking by offering vulnerable and exploited girls options to choose their own path in life through education, information, skills training, and opportunities to build self-confidence and self-efficacy.

Through the Girls Access to Education program, girls who have been trafficked are provided with educational opportunities during their rehabilitation, girls out-of-school are provided with pathways back into school or into vocational training, and those already in primary school are given the necessary support to continue into secondary education.

Our aim is to ensure six full years of education for each girl we support in the GAE program as it is only through long-term training that vulnerable girls can hope to lay the foundation for a safe and sustainable future.

Advocacy

challenging the 'culture of silence'

In addition to direct educational support for girls at risk, we also help fund a program of advocacy that is educating rural and urban communities throughout Cambodia in the legal and social rights of women and children and challenging the "culture of silence" which shames victims of abuse into hiding their experience and denying their trauma.

Nga's story

Nga is a sweet, shy 17-year-old Cambodian girl who grew up in a bamboo shack in a post-war resettlement slum. It's understandable that her mother would send her to Thailand for a good job selling cosmetics…but that promised job opportunity landed Nga in a busy brothel in Bangkok. A teenager in a strange land with no family, no friends or resources, Nga made a remarkable bid for freedom at her first opportunity - when permitted to leave with a client she jumped off his moving motorbike into the river. The villagers fished her out, the police were contacted and the traffickers arrested.

Nga spent 6 months with the re-integration team at the facility run by the Cambodian Women's Crisis Centre, where Lotus Outreach provides counsellors and vocational training for sexually abused girls.

Though she is looked down upon in her community, Nga is fortunate to be free of HIV/AIDS and now works at a Thai market near her home. The road ahead is not easy, but with her innate fortitude and the crisis treatment received at the CWCC, Nga has the best possible chance of not just surviving, but also prospering.