Not every survivor wants to be an activist. Our abuse doesn’t define us and for many of us, just surviving the abuse and recovering from the trauma takes all of our energy and time. Getting up in the morning and facing each new day is enough activism for some. Others have found that turning our pain into power and using our experiences to change things for others is empowering and can lead to growth and support recovery.
Survivor activists are welcome to join Changemakers, our activism network, and take part in any of our projects. If you have an idea to change your pain into power to help other survivors, or want to get involved, we want to hear from you. Additionally, you will receive invitations to take part in research projects that have been approved by our researcher Linking Service.
The Charter For Engaging Abuse Survivors
Our Charter for Organisations Engaging Abuse Survivors in Projects, Research & Service Development. provides the principles for all of our activism and projects. If you are planning or running a project or activity with survivors, we can help you to ensure your practice is safe and anti-abusive, based on the charter. We can also help you to recruit survivor participants through our Changemakers community.
Changemakers
Changemakers is our network of survivor activists, who want to connect or work with us in research, peer support, training, campaigning, advocacy or any other survivor-led projects. Network members are invited to work with us on on all our projects and join peer training and support events for survivor activists. We send out a regular mailing and welcome information from other organisations seeking survivor involvement. To join the network, click here. If you are looking for survivors to be involved in your work, please contact us.
Personal Health Budgets Campaign
We belive every survivor should have access to the support they need. Changemakers members are supporting a campaign is for personal health budgets to be used for accessible therapy for adults abused in childhood.
Read more about the campaign, and how you can get involved HERE.
Ribbons of Truth
We bring messages and Ribbons of Truth to key events as part of our activism, to highlight the experiences and voices of survivors and allies. We welcome messages of support, solidarity and protest from survivors and allies. Our aim is to inform, raise awareness, provoke dialogue and action.
Abuse and safeguarding connected with churches and faith communities
We have a growing community of practice for survivors and allies interested in promoting survivors voices and trauma-competency in churches and faith communities. This includes work with survivors of faith-based abuse, and survivors whose faith is significant in their experiences of abuse and healing. Jane (Chevous) who is a church-abuse survivor, is a survivor representative and vice-chair of the Church of England National Safeguarding Panel, and leads this work. She always welcomes hearing from other survivors of spiritual and church/faith-based abuse.
See HERE for more details of our work with faith communities and survivors of faith-based abuse.
