Did you miss us? We had so much going on last cycle we didn’t send our usual beginning of cycle newsletter! Read on to find out what we’ve been so busy with over the past six months…
Chayn last cycle: launching our new strategy!
Chayn has launched our new strategy, which maps out our vision for a world where we’re no longer subjected to gender-based violence - not at home, nor at work, nor on the internet. The strategy explains our mission and how we’re going to do it, with a target of supporting one million survivors by 2025.
This is our first organisational strategy, and we’re so excited to share it with the world. The strategy has been co-created with peers and allies from around the globe, and realising it will be a collaborative effort too. We’re looking for partners and funders to work with us on the next stage of our journey, and be part of building a feminist future for all. Get in touch if you’d like to join us.
Project highlights
Bloom is back! Our remote trauma-support service has a shiny new online platform and new courses about to launch. When you sign up, you can now choose between our self-paced, on-demand trauma healing courses and our live courses, which come with extra encouragement, reflections and reminders three times a week. All of our courses give you access to our 1-1 chat with our team of survivors and allies. Coming in July is ‘Reclaiming Resilience in Your Trauma Story’, followed by ‘Managing Anxiety’ later in the summer. Find out more about our 2022 courses and sign up here!
We’ve launched our industry-leading partnership with Bumble Inc.! We’ve built a customised Bloom platform for members of Bumble and Badoo who report abuse or sexual assault. It is currently available in English and Spanish, and will be expanded to French, Hindi, and Portuguese later this year. Read more about our partnership on the Bumble blog.
After an epic 18-month journey learning about technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TGBV) with our partner End Cyber Abuse, we released Orbits: a new guide on how we can tackle it through intersectional, trauma-informed, and survivor-centred interventions. Orbits includes an overview of what TGBV is and how it impacts survivors, analysis of how existing responses from technology, research, and policy are lacking, and suggestions for how we can build better systems in these three areas. It proposes a set of design principles as the basis of an intersectional, survivor-centred, and trauma-informed approach, and provides examples of what they look like in practice. It showcases work being done to tackle tech abuse through case studies, and offers practical tools for applying the principles to your own work and context. We’d love to hear from you about what you think of Orbits and if/how you can use it in your work. You can also help us to spread the word about Orbits using this social media pack!
Chayn’s investigative podcast Less Than 2 Percent is out now! The three-part podcast walks with survivors of sexual violence as they seek justice and support, and shows how survivors are being failed by every system they turn to for help. The podcast is hosted by our founder Hera Hussain and journalists Jeevan Ravindran and Emma Guy, and includes a range of incredible guests including Rape Crisis, Alison Phipps, Lucia Osborne-Crowley, Janey Starling, Sohaila Abdulali, Rachel Thompson, and many more. Find the podcast on all major podcast platforms - please rate, review, and let us know what you think.
We’ve released a new guide on Your Story Matters on abortion: It’s Your Choice. This non-judgemental guide will assist us in understanding our options and give a realistic picture of abortion. It includes information and guidance on the practical and emotional process, taking care of ourselves afterwards, speaking about our experience to others (if we would like to), and debunking common myths about abortion. The It’s Your Choice guide is for everyone who can get pregnant and anyone who needs it, anywhere in the world, at any stage of their journey. Read it here.
Team
Chayn has continued to grow! We’ve welcomed many amazing additions to Chayn family in the last two cycles…
Swetha Charles and Ellie Re’em joined as Software Engineers.
Swetha is a chemist turned software engineer who builds and maintains the Bloom platform. Before Chayn, she worked on different projects, including a railway modelling platform (Java) as well as telephone routing system (React, TS, Go, Node, AWS). She speaks English & Tamil and you can reach out to her at swetha@chayn.co. She’d love to chat about tech/tech processes at Chayn, anything plant related and negronis.
Ellie did a software engineering short course in her early 20s and has been working as an engineer ever since. She worked in a few different industries such as green energy, gardening, and at charitable foundations like the Wellcome Trust. She used to speak Chinese as a child but unfortunately has forgotten most of it and these days only speaks English. Currently, she is working on developing the Bloom platform and maintaining Chayn’s tech services. You can reach out to her at ellie@chayn.co.
In June we welcomed Francesca Jarvis as Survivor Services Co-Lead. Francesca grew up in the UK and lives in London. Before joining Chayn, Francesca worked in frontline support services for survivors of sexual violence and in youth work. She has a lot of experience supporting survivors around and through the criminal legal system, alongside managing teams and developing ways of working. She speaks English and you can reach out to her at francesca@chayn.co. She’d love to hear from you!
Mehak Ahmed joined the Bloom team as a facilitator. Mehak grew up in India and lives in New Delhi. She’s trained and worked as a therapist and is a certified yoga instructor. She’s excited to be working on new content at Bloom and releasing Hindi versions of our courses. You can reach out to her at mehak@chayn.co.
We’re hiring a Portuguese-speaking trauma-informed content advisor, and trauma-informed therapist. See our current vacancies and those coming soon here - and please help us spread the word!
Media and events
Like all of you, at Chayn we are horrified at the overturning of Roe vs. Wade by the US supreme court and what this means for reproductive rights in the States and around the world. Forced pregnancy is state violence. Hera has been speaking out in the British news - watch her on the BBC and TalkTV. We send our unwavering solidarity and admiration to all those fighting for abortion rights in the US and beyond.
Hera has been in the British press speaking about a number of other feminist issues too. See her speaking to Sky News about why we need a more trauma-informed approach to policing, on Talk TV about cyberflashing becoming criminalised in the UK, and read her thoughts on Prince Andrew’s role in public life and what it means for survivors in the Guardian.
In June, Hera travelled to Berlin with our trustee Dama Sathianathan and Head of Movement and Partnerships Naomi Alexander Naidoo for Re:publica. Hera spoke on a panel organised by our friends at Superrr about building a feminist internet, and Naomi presented our Orbits report.
Our funder Robert Bosch Stiftung featured us in this hopeful blog on visions for an equitable digital future.
Our partnership with Bumble Inc. has been making headlines! Read about it in Forbes, Fast Company, and Centennial.
Our remote trauma-support service Bloom won the CogX Global Goal Award for Good-health and Wellbeing, a Silver award at the inaugural Anthem Awards and was shortlisted for Digital Leaders HealthTech Innovation of the Year.
Get involved
We’re looking for companies and nonprofits who would like to receive training from us on trauma-informed design and HR. It’s part of an exciting, new service we’re rolling out. Please get in touch at team@chayn.co!
Our friends at Newspeak House in London (UK) are looking for new residents. Newspeak House is an independent residential college founded in 2015 to study, nurture and inspire emerging communities of practice across civil society and the public sector in the UK. Apply soon!
There are many ways to support Chayn’s work. You can volunteer to join us in the next cycle by filling out this form, talk about us on your social media (we’ve created a starter pack to help you out), and donate to Chayn via PayPal or GitHub. Read this for more ways to get involved with Chayn.
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