The Lioness Pride CIC

Who we are

As a small domestic abuse and sexual violence community organisation, our main outreach project is The Lioness Circle - a specialist support network, set up and run 'by & for' survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence, particularly those women and girls born of the African and Caribbean heritage.

We provide long term support services that:
1) Reduces isolation through peer support and regular meetups.
2) Educate the women/girls about different types of abuse and how it impact them and their children.
3) Improve their mental and emotional health by connecting them to their creativity, nature and other alternative healing tools
4) Builds their confidence and self-esteem
5) Creates healthier relationships and lifestyle
6) Empower them to express themselves in different creative ways.
7) Help them develop and explore their vision for the future
AND MUCH MORE!! 

We are so thankful for funding and other support we've received so far. 

Impact of COVID 19

Like many other women's organisations, we made our way through the first national lockdown by adapting our services and utilising our funding reserves. 

We saw an increase to our services, not just in terms of the added number of women accessing our services, but also the level of complexity of each case, on average, increased at a higher rate than usual.

By Nov 2020 we had exhausted our resources and were "burnt out" so we had to completely close our doors by the second lockdown. We were very worried on all fronts as funding and organisational survival threatened our abilities to care for our beneficiaries on any basis whatsoever.

As an organisation, we're often operating on limited funding. For example, insufficient funding to cover full project cost, and little or no funding to cover fixed cost. This is usually due to a number of reasons including limited internal resources to fundraise compared to more established non-black-led organisations. 

It's even more challenging to see funding for the "BAME'' community, not going to BAME-led organisations but other organisations with only a project for "BAME'' people, simply because they can afford to recruit skilled fundraising employees and freelancers.

That is why we're now doing this recruitment drive, so we can continue doing the work we do, and beyond. 

How can you help?

2) Help us lead our the organisation or volunteer a few hours of your time each week, working from home, to help us build on what we've already started.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Many thanks in advance.

The Lioness Pride CIC Board of Directors