The POWA Care Pack

August is Women’s Month and this year we celebrate by building. We build in our communities, in our spaces and our minds, safe havens for the survivors of abuse and gender-based violence. Our first step has been learning from those who have been doing the building since 1979. POWA (People Opposing Women Abuse) came to speak to us and open our minds to the realities of abuse and where the work needs to be done.

To recognise the mighty work that POWA does, our contribution has begun with the production of 250 POWA Care Pack resource guides, which were designed to be pocket companions to the survivors throughout their journeys.

Through POWA’s guidance, we have learnt that it is not enough to jump to easy anger and then forget about it. As a society, we associate anger with strength, and cling to our impotent outrage in the face of pain to prove that we are not weak, that we are not another victim. We dissociate ourselves from the perceived weakness of the person who is in pain and embrace the emotions that cause more pain. It has achieved nothing.

What is needed now, is empathy, which comes from listening and learning. We need to contribute to community-wide networks that support the survivors in their recovery, in ways that are led by the survivors themselves. Where survivors can reclaim the power that has been taken from them. Where there is no space for abuse because the power is with the survivor.

Abuse comes in many forms and has continued, unchecked for long enough that the average age of abusers is creeping closer and closer to childhood. Children are taught from infancy that femininity is always equated with weakness. That in order for a man to win, a woman must lose. That there must be a victim, for you to be a victor.

If we are honest, none of this is news to us. We have been complicit in the silence around abuse and GBV (Gender-Based Violence) for centuries. We aim for sympathy, but the underlying thoughts of “this will never be me” taint our attitudes with pity. Empathy is rare because even in our own minds, we never want to identify with a victim. We keep victimhood at a distance, and it is that distance that allows the perpetrators to continue the cycle of learnt violence, unchecked.

We must close this distance. Embrace the survivors of abuse for what they are: human beings. Create community-wide networks of support, which do not stand idly by while its people are abused, and its children learn to abuse. Safe havens where the support is survivor-led, where the focus is on how we can help the ones who need it, the way they want us to help them, by asking, listening, and respecting them as individuals. By building upon their right to autonomy and free will, which abuse seeks to tear down.

We will build an environment, in our homes, our workplaces, our schools and our minds, where abuse cannot endure. Places, where those who abuse have no choice but to learn or leave.