A SURVIVORS VOICE
Your experiences, resilience, and dedication to thriver-ship bring firsthand knowledge of the challenges, barriers, and gaps in systems like mental health, advocacy, legal, and social services. By sharing your testimony, it provides a human-centered perspective that data or reports can’t fully capture.
By centering survivors’ experiences, resilience, and dedication, they can create a more empathetic, informed, and effective relationships that strengthens community responses to DV and HT.
Advocacy for Systemic Change:
Survivors’ dedication to thriver-ship often fuels a passion for advocacy. They can push for policy changes, such as increased training for first responders, ensuring systems evolve to meet real-world needs. Their voices lend experience and urgency to these efforts.
Authentic Insight into Lived Experiences: Survivors bring firsthand knowledge of the challenges, barriers, and gaps in systems like law enforcement, healthcare, housing, and social services. By sharing their stories, they provide a human-centered perspective that data or reports can’t fully capture. For example, they can highlight specific moments where interventions succeeded or failed, helping stakeholders understand what works and what doesn’t.
Highlighting Resilience and Coping Strategies: Survivors’ resilience—demonstrated through their ability to navigate trauma, rebuild their lives, and pursue thriver-ship—offers powerful lessons. They can share practical strategies for coping, such as building support networks or accessing resources, which can inspire other survivors and inform professionals on how to better support clients.
Experience Can Equal Activism, Activism Can Create Change
SURVIVORS & SUPPORT SYSTEMS VOICES
Building Trust and Collaboration: Including survivors on the panel fosters trust between community members and institutions. Their involvement signals that county resources and stakeholders value survivor input, creating a collaborative environment where all parties feel heard and respected.
