Projects
While our main focus groups are in counselling, training, awareness raising and advocacy there are several important projects within these focus areas that deal with special areas of concern.
COUNSELLING
Rape Crisis counsellors are all volunteer lay counsellors trained by the organisation in a rigorous and inspiring six week process. Three teams in Athlone, Khayelitsha and Observatory are lead by experienced staff who support, teach and guide the counselling teams in their work with survivors through regular meetings, supervision groups and ongoing training sessions.
Survivors can call our 24 hour crisis lines and speak to a counsellor in Xhosa, Afrikaans or English and from there be referred, if they so choose, for face-to-face counselling, a support group, aromatherapy massage or Pretrial Consultation in preparation for a court case. The counsellor, as well as being able to offer information and support to the survivor, will refer family members and close supporters of the survivor to another within the focus group. The counsellor will also act as a liaison with various members in the Criminal Justice System such as police, medical personnel and prosecutors with whom Rape Crisis has strong working relationships. All our counselling services are offered free of charge.
Information gathered from this service acts as a firm evidence base for our advocacy, training and awareness raising work. We learn from every survivor we see.
TELEPHONE SUPPORT
Observatory - +27 (0)21 447 1467
Counselling line - +27 (0)21 447 9762
Athlone - +27 (0)21 684 1180
Counselling line - +27 (0)21 633 9229
Khayelitsha - +27 (0)21 361 9228
Counselling line - +27 (0)21 361 9085
To contact any of our three counselling coordinators for more information e-mail Shiralee McDonald at the Observatory office on shiralee@rapecrisis.org.za, Barbara Williams at our Athlone office on barbara@rapecrisis.org.za and Joyce Doni at our Khayelitsha office on joyce@rapecrisis.org.za.
Counselling Projects
Survivors Speak Out
In this project survivors who want to speak out about their rape experiences are offered opportunities to do so whenever a journalist approaches Rape Crisis for a story. The organisation then acts as a go between, liaison and support for both the survivor and the journalist, making sure that everyone feels safe, supported and respected in this process. Afterwards they are asked to contribute to our dynamic set of guidelines developed to assist speaking out to achieve its main goals:
- Encouraging other survivors to seek help
- Challenging the myths and stereotypes about rape in our society
- Waking society up to the realities of rape in South Africa
- Challenging perpetrators to stop raping
- Serving as a healing opportunity for the survivor who speaks out
Research Data Base
As counsellors gather data about each rape incident from survivors it is recorded as case records that are later captured onto computer without the identity of the survivor being revealed. Using over 54 fields over a period of ten years we have approximately 2 000 cases on record and can now look at trends in rape and do larger scale statistical analysis. Together with NGOs in our network Rape Crisis is currently looking to find the common fields we all gather information on and pool our findings into a larger data base for research where information about adults, children and men and about rape, child abuse and domestic violence can be explored. Rape Crisis also hopes to expand and improve on its own knowledge management systems. Become a data capturer for this project.
Rape Care Centres
Two health facilities in Cape Town, Site B Day Hospital in Khayelitsha and G F Jooste Hospital in Manenberg have opened one stop rape centres offering a holistic service that includes counselling, medical treatment, forensic examination, an interview with the SAPS and follow up medical care. Rape Crisis, together with a network of similar NGOs, is involved in the counselling aspect of the Simelela and Thuthuzela Centres working with a team of experts to ensure high quality of care to all survivors who come to the centres.
TRAINING
Training and Development
Rape Crisis trainers are all volunteer facilitators trained by the organisation in a vigorous and compelling six week process. Two teams in Athlone and Khayelitsha together with volunteers from Observatory are lead by experienced staff who support, teach and guide the training teams in their work with community groups through regular meetings, buddy groups and ongoing training sessions.
Community groups such as schools, universities, churches, rate payers associations, advice offices and other interest groups can approach Rape Crisis for training that is customised to each group’s needs. We prefer to work with a minimum of 15 participants and a for minimum of three hours but we can also put together longer courses spanning several weeks or shorter talks and audiovisual presentations delivered to a larger audience. Volunteers also take part in open air events, marches, exhibitions, displays and stalls.
Our courses are workshop styled, experiential learning environments where everyone pools their skills, knowledge and life experience in order to help one another learn and grow. We offer extensive handouts and notes prepared for each session so participants can take their learning with them. Contact Kholeka Booi at kholeka@rapecrisis.org.za or Liezel van Schalkwyk at liezel@rapecrisis.org.za for a full quotation. This is the income generating social enterprise arm of the organisation.
The aim of these training programmes is to develop creative and innovative prevention methodologies, to facilitate community groups building safe spaces within their areas and to change attitudes about rape within communities and between men and women in South Africa. For example, if a factory nurse calls Rape Crisis in to run a workshop on rape for the staff on the factory floor the aim of that workshop will be to show the group how to respond if one of their member is raped and also to explore ways in which they can make their working environment safer for women. In this way we constantly learn from the communities of which we are a part. These methods also support prevention and awareness raising by examining gender relationships in a particular place and seeing how the men and women in that factory relate to one another.
Rape Crisis hopes to expand this programme by developing creative technologies for learning and awareness through developing plays with community drama groups, creative writing and using a combination of art, music, photography and technology for digital story telling.
Training Projects:
Peer Educators and Counsellors in Schools
For the past few years Rape Crisis has been going to high schools in the Khayelitsha and Manenberg areas and running a programme with the learners, training them either as peer educators who run education projects raising awareness about rape in their school or peer counsellors who are there to offer support to survivors at the school. Learners are supervised by experienced Rape Crisis volunteers. Rape Crisis hopes to expand this project by getting the peer educators and counsellors from different schools together to meet and share and learn from one another on a regular basis.
The Birds and Bees Youth Camp
One of the ways that school learners come together to begin learning about rape prevention is through a youth camp. 30 young high school learners from different schools in Manenberg and Athlone come on a five day camp away from their usual environment to do workshops, arts and crafts and music in groups where boys and girls work both separately and together. Topics covered are things like relationships, sex and sexuality, HIV, religion and spirituality and of course, gender. The fu n and the frustration of learning to bridge the gender gap are felt by everyone and experienced Rape Crisis volunteers gain valuable skills learning to coordinate and facilitate the camp themselves. We hope to expand this project by starting a youth group and employing a youth worker so that the experience of the camp can be followed through and sustained by ongoing events and activities.
Criminal Justice System Training
One of the ways in which Rape Crisis builds strong working relationships within the Criminal Justice System is through its interactions with police, nurses, doctors, prosecutors and magistrates. Training is needed by all these related professions because working with rape survivors is a specialised field not covered extensively in their basic curricula. We do also do sessions within some of the basic curricula as well, such as our work with UCT medical students. We aim to improve the quality of services to survivors through this training programme in the hopes that this will keep survivors in the system right up until the perpetrator is convicted.
Victim Support Rooms
In South Africa hundreds of community members come forward every month to volunteer at their local police stations, courts and health facilities to help victims of all violent crimes, not just rape. When these volunteers come together Rape Crisis is there to lobby on their behalf, to offer training and to assist them with networking and the pooling of resources and sharing of ideas. We train them together as a group and we train individual stations and Community Policing Forums. Our special focus is on rape and gender violence. We work in partnership with five other organisations: NICRO, Business Against Crime, The Trauma Centre for Victims of Violence, RAPCAN and Mosaic under the auspices of the Western Cape Network on Violence Against Women. We call ourselves the Trauma Rooms Focus Group and are founder members of a government civil society working group called the Provincial Victim Support Working Group together with the SAPS and the Department of Community Safety.
TELEPHONE INQUIRIES
Athlone - (021) 684-1180
Khayelitsha - (021) 361-9228
ADVOCACY
Rape Crisis community activists and court supporters are all volunteer facilitators trained by the organisation in a challenging and motivating six week process. A team drawn from volunteers in Athlone, Khayelitsha and Observatory are lead by a professionally trained staff member who supports, teaches and coordinates the court supporters in their work with survivors taking cases to trial through regular meetings, supervision groups and ongoing training sessions. She is assisted in her work by two supervisors based at court who are experienced Rape Crisis volunteers.
The aim of these areas of work is to give survivors the knowledge and information they need to deal with the enormous difficulties in our justice system, to improve the organisation’s relationships within the Criminal Justice System and to advocate for change within the system as well as on the level of law reform and policy making. Since the passing of new legislation in December 2007 Rape Crisis has focused on the implementation of the Sexual Offences Act with an emphasis on the importance of psychosocial care in the successful resolution of a trial, the long delays experienced by survivors and several interesting features in the 58 new offences created in the Act. Rape Crisis s working with other NGO members of the National Working Group on Sexual Offences to develop training materials on the new Act and to take these as far afield as possible.
Advocacy Projects:
Court Support
Court supporters are based at four of Cape Town’s specialised Sexual Offences Courts in Parow, Cape Town, Wynberg and Khayelitsha. We have also done some work in the Cape Town High Court with recent high profile cases against serial rapists. These volunteers are there to offer information on the process of the trial to survivors and their witnesses in the case and to introduce them to the layout of the court and the different role players involved in the trial. In this way survivors learn a little of what to expect in court. Court supporters also offer emotional support and refer survivors for counselling. We hope to expand this project into other Sexual Offences Courts as the need is continuously growing. Several volunteers have also been trained in Pretrial Consultation for our own counselling service.
Watching Briefs
One of the ways we hope to monitor the implementation of the new Sexual Offences Act is to track the progress of three different survivors through three different courts, gathering rich experiential data on the different aspects of the trial and the services offered within the Criminal Justice System. Results of this research will form part of the Rape Crisis contribution to a Research Consortium lead by RAPCAN and UCT’s Gender Health and Justice Research Unit.
Shukumisa Campaign
In December 2007 the Sexual Offences Act was amended to include a new legal definition of rape and an expanded list of types of sexual offences including human trafficking for sexual exploitation, compelling others to commit offences and so on. Rape Crisis together with active members of the Sexual Offences Act Working Group have embarked on a campaign to educate all South Africans about this new legislation, their rights under its law and the services within the Criminal Justice System to which they should have access. This is the Shukumisa Campaign to shake up the thinking of the nation in respect of sexual offences.
TELEPHONE INQUIRIES
(021) 447-1467 or e-mail our Advocacy Coordinator Babalwa Petelo on babalwa@rapecrisis.org.za for more information.