Program helps with healing for sexual assault survivors
Survivor’s Hope Crisis Centre is a resource that allows those in our community who have been affected by sexual assault and violence to access services. They offer a variety of programs but one of their programs in particular needs some help to keep going. SARAH a program that helps people heal, did not receive federal funding this year.
“SARAH is an acronym that stands for sexual assault, recovery and healing. It’s an aspect of our work here at Survivor’s Hope in providing support for those impacted by sexual violence through both our crisis program as well as our counselling program,” said Coral Kendel, executive director of Survivor’s Hope Crisis Centre.
The SARAH program luckily will not be leaving our community right away as an emergency grant from Manitoba Justice has helped them continue for now. This grant only patially funds the program’s needs this year so they continue to need support. Survivor’s Hope has created a gofundme page and has been spreading the word in our community so that people can contribute to making sure that this valuable resource remains for those who need it.
SARAH is a unique program for Survivor’s Hope, because unlike the prevention and acute care services that they provide, this program directly helps people after they’ve experienced violence. There are a few different aspects of this program involving counselling as well as crisis support.
“In the counselling program of SARAH, we have 24/7 availability of advocates who can provide support to survivors of sexualized violence when they go to an Interlake Eastern area RCMP detachment to make a police report or a hospital emergency room to seek medical care after an experience of sexual assault. Those advocates will attend, they will sit with those individuals throughout the entirety of their stay and provide information to them about their different medical and legal options, provide emotional support, as well as advocacy with the other professionals involved in their care. That’s a crucial piece to being able to provide comprehensive support to survivors in the absence of sexual assault nurse examiners in our region. With our SARAH counselling program, anyone is able to access that program, who is 13 years of age and older, of any gender, who is impacted by sexual violence that perhaps they have experienced themselves, or perhaps a loved one experienced and they feel affected by supporting their loved one. Those counselling sessions are individual opportunities for folks to reprocess their feelings, learn new coping skills, and heal from that harm. They’re done either in person in someone’s community, by phone, or virtually. There’re also support groups, healing groups, anf drop-in groups that the SARAH counseling program offers as well. It’s a vital opportunity for those who may have first had contact with us in our crisis program to have continued and follow up care. Also, for youth who we see in our school workshop program, if they’ve made disclosures, they can access a counsellor, as well as anyone from the general public who self-refers or is referred from another social service that they might be accessing,” said Kendel.
She explained that this program has a huge impact on the way that Survivor’s Hope functions because it works hand in hand with the support that is available from their other programs.
Kendel said that when they learned that SARAH was no longer going to receive federal funding it was nearly a very instant shutting down of services.
“We learned that federal funding for our SARAH counselling program wasn’t continuing on April 3, when funding had already lapsed as of March 31. So essentially, immediately, it was no longer funded. The initial reaction to that news was shock, and just devastation in knowing what this meant for individuals accessing our program, as well as those who would potentially need it in the future and to have such a huge gap develop in our region when it’s already so under-resourced, leaving so many without vital opportunities to overcome harm,” said Kendel.
This program is necessary in our region. According to Kendel, they see up to 100 people a year for long-term counselling as well as many people whom they speak to for a shorter amount of time or pass along to other resources thanks to their accessing the SARAH program.
“It is crucial to the care we’re able to provide and in indirect ways, it influences so many more than the people that we sit down with because their family systems are now able to move forward from a better place because their family member is healthier now,” she said.
Because of how much Survivor’s Hope knew this program needed to continue in our community, they immediately flooded social media making our government aware of the need as well as crowdsourcing fundraising. This is how they received a $25,000 grant from Manitoba Justice that will allow their program to run until at least this fall.
“[It was] an incredibly appreciated piece of stability that they provided and the community has stepped forward in momentous ways through donations and organizing independent fundraisers, and all those pieces put together has really been instrumental in ensuring that we’re not disrupting care and further harming our participants by being unreliable support systems for them,” said Kendel.
If you would like to support the continuation of this program in our community there are a few different options that you can give to the SARAH program.
“In the month of May, the Pinawa Foundation has their community project month, ongoing. If individuals would like to donate to Survivor’s Hope they can contribute to Pinawa Foundation in our name, either by mail or by etransfer and those donations will be stretched 40 per cent,” said Kendel.
Residents can also donate to the ‘Help Save SARAH’ campaign on gofundme at https://gofund.me/7be2bbed. They also have a Canada Helps page where residents can make one-time or monthly donations at https://www.canadahelps.org/en/charities/survivors-hope-crisis-centre-inc/. Survivor’s Hope also takes donations on their own website as well as provides more information at https://survivors-hope.ca/help-save-sarah/. Finally, there is also an advocacy letter template on that same website.
To keep up with Survivor’s Hope residents can follow their social media for updates.
Kendel would like to thank the residents who have helped them so far.
“Thank you to those who have already stepped forward with their immediate support, who raise their voices, who’ve made it apparent how much they are valuing the care available for survivors and believing and standing behind survivors, with how they’re supporting our program. That is so appreciated and we thank those who have already made incredible efforts over the past month,” said Kendel.
