From Dropouts to Straight-A Students!

Check out the report card of six of our Blossom Bus girls, who not only passed the 8th grade, but did so with flying colors! These girls are among 46 Blossom Bus riders who just advanced to the next grade level.



Initially forced to dropout due to lack of transportation to the nearest secondary schools, these girls have made themselves, their teachers and their parents proud. Without this seemingly small intervention, their path would look much different. Many of them already had marriages arranged (some as young as 12) while others would be working in agriculture for wages far below the sustenance level.

Please join us in congratulating them for their achievements! And please consider supporting the Blossom Bus -- a $150 donation will keep one of these girls in school for an entire year!

Dining for Women and Lotus Outreach

By Ed Malley, Treasurer

Simple ideas seems to be the best, don’t they? The wheel. Binary coding. The ice cream cone. Simple, clean (ok, not the ice cream cone), and replicable.

Raising money for a charity is rarely simple; however, Marsha Wallace had a stroke of brilliance in 2002 when she called some friends and said, “Hey, instead of going out to dinner together next week, let’s have a potluck at my house, and we’ll give all the money we would have spent at the restaurant to charity.”

Simple, clean (unless they had ice cream, of course), and so replicable that there are now some 215 chapters of Dining for Women across the U.S. And over $1 million donated to charities which “…empower women and girls living in extreme poverty by funding programs that foster good health, education, and economic self-sufficiency.”

In a challenging and thorough process, Dining for Women selects one charity to be the beneficiary of their chapters’ gatherings each month. This April, Lotus Outreach (LO) is that charity. With the monies provided by this wonderful organization, LO will fund the program “Trauma Counseling and Reintegration Assistance for Shelter-based Victims of Human Trafficking, Rape and Domestic Violence” in the town of Sisophon, province of Banteay Meanchey, Cambodia.

To help raise awareness, Dining for Women created an event that was held at the Town & Country Shopping Center in Palo Alto on March 26th. I was there to represent LO. Sponsored by the newly launched magazine “Made in Palo Alto” and by the shopping center, and hosted by the retailer Brim, there was music, wine, food, and art to entice shoppers.

Ultimately, however, the focus was on the mission of Dining for Women and how organizations, and in particular LO, were delivering. We heard from:

• Palo Alto’s mayor, Sid Espinosa


• Jeff Chow, Founder, Collaborate for Africa


• Susan Negrin, Bead for Life, DFW Grant Recipient


• Keynote speaker: Bhatupe Mhango, formerly with UNPlus, United Nations HIV/AIDS advocacy group

I also offered some thoughts about how LO and Dining for Women are together going to accomplish a tremendous amount of good very efficiently.

Sometimes these events don’t accomplish much, with folks standing around telling each other what good work they do. But that day there were lots of people coming and going, ideas exchanged, raffle tickets sold, eyes opened and minds enlightened. Lots of energy and a raucous raffle. And lots of fun!

So there’s another simple idea...raise money and awareness while having fun. Alas, there were no ice cream cones; but the cupcakes were scrumptious!!!

To learn more about Dining for Women and our project being featured in April, please visit http://diningforwomen.org/.

The Long Path to Recovery

By Rachel Curtis, Development Manager

“We teach them first of all: forgive. Forgive the people who do this to you and forgive yourself," said Somaly Mam, who spoke on Tuesday at the second annual Imagine Solutions conference in Naples, Florida. "We say be happy with what you are now.”

Mam, a former sex slave and leader of her own foundation that envisions a world where all women and children are safe from slavery, offers this advice to the victims she helps. Because her mission and many of her methods align so closely with those of Lotus Outreach, when Mam speaks, we listen.

One of her primary axioms is manifest across our range of programs – that victims need more than rescuing. "It takes five minutes to save them. But then what are you going to do with them?" Mam tells news-press.com. We agree – recovery is a much longer, steeper road, and economic empowerment is the best fuel we can give victims who will be faced with paralyzing stigma and discrimination upon their re-entry into society.

Our projects foster economic empowerment in two ways; either directly through skills training and microloans as with NFE and IRD, or through formal education that opens doors to opportunity as with LEARN and GATE. What’s more, our CTC shelter provides physical security and psychological solace on the front line for victims of sexual or domestic abuse and human trafficking. These patients have a choice of the avenues above for their eventual reintegration.

All of these paths meet the same goal: to build confidence, self-esteem and a positive attitude toward the future. Our job, as we see it, is to give our beneficiaries reason to follow Mam’s advice – and be happy with what they are today.

100 Years of Progress and Peril

In the past 100 years…

When the first International Women’s Day took place, women could vote in only two countries. Today, that right is virtually universal and women have now been elected to lead governments on every continent [1]

Women are participating in the workforce in ever increasing numbers and 67 countries have laws mandating equal pay for men and women [1]

Since 1980, the international Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was signed and ratified by all but seven countries [2]

But our work is far from complete...
Despite these causes for celebration on the International Women’s Day Centennial, there remain huge gaps in progress:

Of the world’s 130 million out-of-school youth, 70% are girls [3]

Though women perform 66% of the world’s work, they earn only 10% of the world’s income [4]

Women own only 1% of the world’s land [4]

On a global scale, 100 million girls are “missing” as a result of murder, neglect and selective abortion [5]

Of the 800,000 people trafficked across international borders each year, 80% are women and girls [6]

You can help!

We encourage you to help us empower thousands of Asia’s most vulnerable girls and women through our range of innovative, grassroots programs.  What’s more, you can match your gift by 30% this March 16th if you give to any of our projects featured on the Global Giving website. The pool of matching funds is limited and will run out fast – so mark your calendars and stop by early to claim your slice of the bonus!

You might also consider making a gift in honor of a special woman or girl in your life using GlobalGiving's tribute card feature.  Just choose a project from LO's list, enter your donation amount and click "give as a gift in honor/memory of someone" (the link next to the gift icon).  You can have your personalized tribute card emailed or mailed to that special gal or you can print it instantly from your computer (be sure to pay attention to the delivery options!).

Questions?  Please contact us at info@lotusoutreach.org or 888.831.9990.

Life in India's Brick Kilns: A Photo Tour

In the course of our right to education advocacy in Mewat, it came to our attention that hundreds of out-of-state children were laboring in the district’s 30 brick kilns. Operational only eight months out of the year, the sweltering kilns draw landless migrants from across India who cannot leave their children behind, nor can they afford to send them to school once in Mewat. Children as young as four are working grueling 12 to 16-hour days at the expense of attending school.  A child making bricks in Mewat can earn about $1 per day.






The final photo (above) features a handful of the hundreds of brick kiln children that Lotus Outreach has enrolled in school since 2009.  A donation of $60 will give one child the resources she needs to go to school this year.  Learn more or make a contribution at http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/endchildlabor/