We’re trying out a new format for this newsletter. We’ll send a newsletter at the beginning of each cycle (four month sprints we do with a new team of volunteers). It will cover highlights and future plans. Like it? Let us know: team@chayn.co
Chayn This Cycle: Busy Bees!
This cycle has been a period of activity, growth, and looking ahead to the future at Chayn. Internally, we’ve been working to co-produce our new three-year strategy, which will serve as our guide for 2022-2025. Our staff, trustees and volunteers have been collaborating on thematic groups which will make up the strategy, on topics such as vision, movement building, storytelling, and thriving community. In June, we brought together our work so far at our strategy synthesis day, which you can read more about here. Next, our thematic groups will hold consultation workshops with external partners and friends of Chayn to validate and add to our work so far, before sharing a strategy draft for public comment in October. If you’d like to be invited to a consultation workshop and/or to comment on the draft strategy, get in touch.
Strategising for the future doesn’t mean the action stops at Chayn! We were buzzing with excitement as we announced our partnership with the dating app Bumble, a first-of-its-kind collaboration to offer trauma support to their users who experience sexual abuse or assault. Bumble users who report assault will be referred to a custom version of our online trauma support service, Bloom, and will get access to on-demand courses, one-to-one chat with our team, and up to six therapy sessions. We’re working with Bumble to launch a pilot before the end of the year, with the full Bloom for Bumble service coming in 2022. Read about our trailblazing partnership here.
Project Highlights
Three of our five 2021 Bloom courses have already finished! Last week, we started our course on ‘Recovering from Toxic and Abusive Relationships.’ We’ll be exploring how and why abusers do what they do, abusive tactics and the cycle of coercive control, as well as find our own resilience and recovery tools for the future of healthy relationships we deserve. Sign up for this and all of our courses are still open on our website - please share!
We created a new guide on reproductive rights for Your Story Matters (YSM), our digital companion for survivors of sexual assault. The guide includes how to take care of yourself before and after abortion, and related support. We will be launching the guide soon. In the meantime, visit YSM here.
Chayn’s investigative podcast Less Than 2 Percent is getting closer to launch! This seven-part series will dig deeper into the reporting processes of sexual violence, and we’ve been working with our investigative journalists to finalise the episodes. If you’ve reported sexual violence to any institution (police, religious organization, school or university, etc) and would like to share your story with us, please take this short, anonymous survey. Keep your eyes peeled for our Patreon page launching soon!
Orbits is a joint initiative with End Cyber Abuse, to produce a global field guide on intersectional, survivor-centric and trauma-informed responses to tech-facilitated gender-based violence. This cycle, we shared version one of our design principles for trauma-informed research and technology design, and held a series of consultation workshops to test and develop these principles with experts and practitioners from around the world. We’re now working on a final version of the principles and a first draft of the field guide - which we’ll be sharing with workshop participants and other ecosystem actors for comments. If you’d like to see the field guide draft, get in touch.
We’re taking a journey of healing from trauma though creative practice, via a series of workshops with survivors and practicing artists, funded by Lankelly Chase. Over the past few months, we have chosen poetry and photography as the mediums for the workshops and planned the content. Next, we will be reaching out to artists and survivors to take part - so if you’re interested to participate in or lead a workshop, get in touch!
We ran our first internal ‘learning circle’, a new approach to collective learning and growth by bringing our team together to deepen knowledge on an issue connected to our work. For our first topic, we chose prison abolition and non-carceral feminism. You can read a blog about how we facilitated the learning here.
We’ve been working on a brand new Chayn website. This website is designed specifically for survivors, to ease access to our resources and improve their user experience and journey. We are currently putting the final touches on the website, and it will be launching very soon!
Team
Chayn is growing! In July, we welcomed our new tech lead, Anna Hughes, to the team! Anna is a specialist in tech for good, with experience building web services prioritising accessibility, security, and impact. Anna will be leading the tech for all Chayn’s digital services, starting off with building a web platform for Bloom. Connect with her here.
This month, our new Communications Manager, Aiman Javed, joined Chayn to amplify our work and outreach and lead our communications channels - including this newsletter! A writer and editor, Aiman has a background in literature and journalism, which informs her approach to storytelling and creative engagement across different platforms. You can reach her here.
In August, Product Manager Nadine Krishnamurthy-Spencer started work on Bloom. With a background in commercial tech startups, Nadine has spent the last year working on Tech for Good projects in the mental health space. She's joining the tech team to ensure we build a simple, human and user-centric Bloom platform. Connect with her here. The Bloom team also welcomed therapist Fatima Hussain, who is working on writing and editing our courses.
We’re hiring a Tech Lead, Full Stack Developer and Backend Developer. Find out more here - and please help us spread the word! We’ll soon be recruiting English-Spanish bilingual therapists, translators, and course facilitators for the expansion of our service. Email us to be the first to know when the vacancies are live.
Media and Events
Our partnership with Bumble has been all over the news! Check out the announcement in The Times, Adweek, Metro, The Independent, CSR journal and Mashable.
Naomi spoke about Chayn’s open source model at Tech for Good London’s June meetup and joined a Space4 event about using Technology Against Violence.
Hera spoke to Insider about the relationship between domestic abuse and football.
Next month, Hera and Naomi are both speaking at the Ada’s List Conference on 8 and 9 October. Hera will be delivering a keynote speech, and Naomi will be talking about the journey so far for Bloom and what’s next. Get your tickets here.
Get Involved
We’re looking for new volunteers! Join us for our next cycle, where we’ll be working on exciting projects including launching our YSM reproductive guide and the Less Than 2 Percent podcast. We ask our volunteers to contribute around 4 hours a week, including a 2-hour online working session, and to attend our monthly Chayn Day, a 3-hour meeting on the first Sunday of every month. Find out more and apply here.
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