Samoa Victim Support Project

Samoa Victim Support Group (SVSG) provides safety, education and a home to young victims of rape and abuse. They care for babies and children who have been sexually abused by family members and in many cases these children have been disowned and blamed for bringing shame on the family. Samoan Victim Support Group cares for these children on a shoe string budget as well as managing the legal process to bring justice for these children.
Background
When I was in Samoa in 2013, I spent a morning with the girls at the SVSG and they had a huge impact on me. The girls were gorgeous, so full of smiles and laughter. They are survivors for whom I have the utmost respect for. I had heard some of their stories: these girls have all been on traumatic and heartbreaking journeys. Most of them are with SVSG because they have experienced sexual violence, and for many of them this was incest. A number of them have been pregnant as a result of this violence. Tragically, in many cases these girls were then disowned and blamed for bringing shame on the family. SVSG provides safety, education and a home for these girls. I left SVSG feeling like what I had done that day with the girls was but a drop in the ocean. I felt like I had empowered the girls with knowledge of their bodies, but also knew there was so much information we didn't cover. SVSG were hugely grateful for the workshop, but I wanted to do more. These girls really touched my heart. There is a huge need for ongoing body/sexuality education as well as antenatal education for the pregnant girls. SVSG has been on my mind a lot since. (Details of my experience can be found here).
Earlier this year Wellington-based charity SpinningTop approached me to see if I would be interested in offering a more comprehensive programme for the girls at SVSG. I spent some time putting together a programme that I felt would offer knowledge, empowerment and healing for the girls. The project grew, and I am grateful that two inspirational colleagues Genevieve Simperingham and Aileen Devonshire will also be facilitating the programme with me. We are volunteering our time to provide the girls at SVSG with a week-long education and counselling programme in August 2014.
Project Aims
The girls will:
What Will We Do?
We will provide a holistic nurturing, healing and educative programme over the course of five days. Spending multiple days with the girls will be important to build relationships and allow the girls time to trust us and work out the questions that they want/need to ask. As well as a more structured programme, there will be unstructured time with the girls, to allow relationship building and provide the chance for informal and private discussions. Click here to view a more detailed programme.
Who Are We?
We are a strong team of women who will each bring our own strengths and expertise to work holistically to bring healing, knowledge and empowerment to the girls at SVSG.
How Can You Help?
SVSG relies solely on the donations to provide their crucial service. We want to be able to provide as much support as possible to SVSG and we are aiming to raise $5000 to donate to SVSG. We have set up a Givealittle page here where you can help us reach our goal. The money we raise will be used for the following:
If you live in the Manawatu, we are hosting a fundraising movie in July, please see here for more details.
We will keep updating this page, so please do check back in soon! In the meantime, the photos below are of SVSG and Rachel's visit in 2013.
Background
When I was in Samoa in 2013, I spent a morning with the girls at the SVSG and they had a huge impact on me. The girls were gorgeous, so full of smiles and laughter. They are survivors for whom I have the utmost respect for. I had heard some of their stories: these girls have all been on traumatic and heartbreaking journeys. Most of them are with SVSG because they have experienced sexual violence, and for many of them this was incest. A number of them have been pregnant as a result of this violence. Tragically, in many cases these girls were then disowned and blamed for bringing shame on the family. SVSG provides safety, education and a home for these girls. I left SVSG feeling like what I had done that day with the girls was but a drop in the ocean. I felt like I had empowered the girls with knowledge of their bodies, but also knew there was so much information we didn't cover. SVSG were hugely grateful for the workshop, but I wanted to do more. These girls really touched my heart. There is a huge need for ongoing body/sexuality education as well as antenatal education for the pregnant girls. SVSG has been on my mind a lot since. (Details of my experience can be found here).
Earlier this year Wellington-based charity SpinningTop approached me to see if I would be interested in offering a more comprehensive programme for the girls at SVSG. I spent some time putting together a programme that I felt would offer knowledge, empowerment and healing for the girls. The project grew, and I am grateful that two inspirational colleagues Genevieve Simperingham and Aileen Devonshire will also be facilitating the programme with me. We are volunteering our time to provide the girls at SVSG with a week-long education and counselling programme in August 2014.
Project Aims
- To provide sexuality and body education, as well as ante-natal education for those girls that are pregnant.
- To build trust and provide a safe space so that the girls feel comfortable asking questions.
- To make connections in the Samoan community to provide ante-natal education and support for the girls during labour and birth on an on-going basis.
- Empower the girls with the knowledge, skills and tools to help themselves and each other in their ongoing journey of healing their past and current trauma.
- To fundraise $5000 to donate directly to SVSG. Please click here to see how you can help us reach this goal!
The girls will:
- Feel loved, empowered, comfortable and able to ask questions about their body, pregnancy and childbirth.
- Understand the bodily changes of puberty, their menstrual cycles, the process of conception, pregnancy and childbirth.
- Understand the connection between past experiences and current emotions, their relationship with their body and their sexuality.
- Gain education and intervention at a crucial point in their lives helping them break cycles of abuse.
What Will We Do?
We will provide a holistic nurturing, healing and educative programme over the course of five days. Spending multiple days with the girls will be important to build relationships and allow the girls time to trust us and work out the questions that they want/need to ask. As well as a more structured programme, there will be unstructured time with the girls, to allow relationship building and provide the chance for informal and private discussions. Click here to view a more detailed programme.
Who Are We?
We are a strong team of women who will each bring our own strengths and expertise to work holistically to bring healing, knowledge and empowerment to the girls at SVSG.
- Rachel Hansen is the founder of Good Talks, which provides in-school workshops on sexuality, gender and body image as well as educational workshops for teachers and parents. Rachel is an accomplished educator and an engaging presenter with a real affinity for young women, who really respond to her enthusiasm and humour. She has extensive experience working with a wide range of people in a number of fields including education, counselling and training. Rachel has a first-class honours degree in Psychology and a Masters degree in Criminology from Cambridge University (UK). Her research has focussed on youth development, youth offending and women’s health. Rachel has also been involved in a lot of volunteer community work over the years, including roles as an ESOL tutor for recent migrants, support worker for refugee families, current member of the Community Birth Services Trust Board, and founder of Manawatu Breastmilk Sharing.
- Genevieve Simperingham is the founder of the Peaceful Parent Institute. She’s a parent coach, parent educator, holistic counsellor and writer. She has twenty years’ experience in group facilitation and education and has more specifically specialized over the last 9 years in facilitating education, counselling and self-healing to parents and teenagers. Genevieve and her husband Dan are part of a team of three facilitators who run intensive leadership camps for teenagers in years 12 and 13. During these camps, youth begin to find their confidence, their voice, they go through a journey of growth physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually that is nothing short of a life changing experience. Genevieve has a strong affinity with young people who are beginning to face and heal the effects of trauma caused by physical, emotional or sexual abuse. When she was 17 a series of events led her to gain a heightened awareness of the negative effects that the very extreme physical, emotional and sexual abuse from her childhood had on her and hence dedicated herself to do whatever it would take to gain peace of mind. Her journey of counselling and healing then began. Over the last twenty years Genevieve has presented hundreds of workshops and courses from evening seminars to five day residential retreats in parenting, relationships, self-healing, meditation and personal development. She is an Aware Parenting Instructor, as well as the only Heart to Heart Parenting Facilitator in New Zealand, having trained with psychologist and psychotherapist Robin Grille. Genevieve shares her in-depth study of many experts in the fields of early childhood development, non-punitive parenting methods, conflict resolution, emotional and trauma healing, family systems, communication skills, personal development, attachment and neuroscience.
- Aileen Devonshire is the founder of The Holistic Birth Company and has worked in health-related areas most of her life. She is also presently the manager at Community Birth Services, a Charitable Trust providing pregnancy and parenting support and education to empower family during pregnancy and the early stages of parenting; Aileen has been teaching antenatal classes for sixteen years; she gained her Diploma in Childbirth Education in 1999 and has been teaching continuously since then. She has also taught on the Childbirth Educator Diploma Programme and been a supervisor of childbirth education trainees for many years. Additionally Aileen is a qualified homeopath, a trained practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Programming and has a first class honours degree in Social Anthropology. Her research was in the area of Birth within the New Zealand Health System. She has studied a variety of other modalities which she draws on in her work and has trained as a Birth Doula with Michel Odent in the UK. Aileen is of New Zealand Maori descent, has two adult sons and loves to travel. She has a strong passion for social justice and in earlier times has worked with both Rape Crisis whilst living in the UK and Women's Refuge in New Zealand.
How Can You Help?
SVSG relies solely on the donations to provide their crucial service. We want to be able to provide as much support as possible to SVSG and we are aiming to raise $5000 to donate to SVSG. We have set up a Givealittle page here where you can help us reach our goal. The money we raise will be used for the following:
- post-partum supplies
- food for the girls
- school stationery and books
- pregnancy and childbirth education resources
- a DVD player
- formula for babies in the shelter who don't have mothers, or mothers unable to breastfeed for psychological reasons (this is a huge ongoing cost for SVSG)
- other necessities that SVSG requests
If you live in the Manawatu, we are hosting a fundraising movie in July, please see here for more details.
We will keep updating this page, so please do check back in soon! In the meantime, the photos below are of SVSG and Rachel's visit in 2013.