Our mission is to prevent sexual violence systemically
Through advocacy, education, and community engagement, we strive to create a world where everyone can live free from the threat of sexual violence. We believe that by challenging harmful attitudes and behaviors, and advocating for policies that prioritize safety and respect for all, we can prevent sexual violence systemically and create a safer, more equitable society.
Our core values
Systemic Change
We are the first and only organization dedicated to preventing sexual violence systemically. To create positive and lasting social change, we must be the catalyst for large-scale transformations. This entails revolutionizing policies, processes, and power structures to address the complex roots of sexual violence. Our foundation sits firmly upon three pillars – policy, research, and institutions. These are the mechanisms we use to catalyze lasting transformational change.
Intersectionality
A central value of our organization is intersectionality and social justice. We recognize that oppression and marginalization are interconnected and thus it is inappropriate and ineffective to view them in a vacuum. Additionally, it is harmful to tokenize marginalized individuals. We provide opportunities for involvement that include decision-making powers thus ensuring we remain a reflective, inclusive, and empowering organization. We have developed intentional feedback structures to ensure the balance of power is consistently investigated and shifted to maintain a community-centered approach, both internally and externally. Lastly, we are actively anti-professionalism due to the racism, classism, and ableism inherent in "professional" spaces.
Survivor Led
The SVPA was founded on the core belief that those most impacted by sexual violence must be leaders in addressing it. Thus, our entire team is made up of survivors. Our board of directors consists of people from the communities most impacted by this issue. This encompasses people of all races and ethnicities, including Native and Indigenous Peoples, who experience high rates of sexual violence but are often not represented in this field. Other communities that also experience heightened rates of sexual violence, including LGBTQ+ individuals, disabled people, asylum seekers, and undocumented immigrants are represented on our board of directors and within our core team.
Innovation & Collaboration
Due to the non-profit industrial complex, collaboration is de-prioritized at the expense of effective social change. In order to access grants, philanthropy, and other opportunities, nonprofits are incentivized to work independently. We are actively combatting this with innovation and collaboration. Our impact is amplified by our ability to bring together a diverse group of survivors, activists, and nonprofit organizations. We’re able to learn from each other’s experiences and knowledge to create effective solutions together. We invest time and resources to learn, reflect on our work, share and receive feedback, and gather data to develop improved, creative, and groundbreaking solutions to support survivors and prevent sexual violence.
Community Accountability
Our foundation sits firmly at the intersection of grassroots organizing, coalition building, and centering the voices of those most impacted by sexual violence. We have systems in place to ensure we receive feedback from the community and that we remain accountable. Our leadership team is made up of survivors with intersecting marginalized identities. Further, we create space and opportunities for survivor feedback from individuals and organizations in the field. This community transparency allows for a solid foundation on which to build a society free from sexual violence.
Abolishing Oppression
Sexual violence is a result of existing forms of power, control, and oppression. It is also a tool used to gain and maintain power, control, and oppression. Sexual violence will never be eradicated until all forms of systemic oppression are abolished. This includes racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, fatphobia, sexism, classism, and more. Law enforcement and the criminal injustice system are a primary example of these structures of power, control, and oppression. Thus, they are inappropriate mechanisms for addressing sexual violence. A pillar of sexual violence prevention must be abolishing police and the carceral state as well as all forms of systemic oppression.
What is sexual violence?
Sexual violence includes all forms of rape, sexual assault, harassment, and abuse. Sexual violence is both the result of existing power imbalances and a tool used to gain and maintain power, control, and oppression. This can be on an individual, institutional, or systemic level or a combination thereof.
Sexual Violence
Gender-Based
Violence
Sexual violence cannot be equated to gender based violence. There is certainly overlap but it is reductive to equate them. Sexual violence can be levied on the axis of gender oppression but it is also levied on the axis of other forms of oppression and/or the intersection thereof.
How we define Prevention?
Here at the SVPA, we define preventing sexual violence as preventing perpetration instead of focusing on victims’ actions.
How we define Justice?
We believe restorative justice and transformative justice are extremely powerful when used together. Restorative justice facilitates the intervention and transformative justice facilitates prevention. We are a police abolitionist organization, thus we do not promote retributive justice.
Retributive Justice
- This is the existing criminal legal system. It originated with the European colonizers.
- Incidents are viewed as a violation of laws, rules, or policies.
- The focus is on punishing the perpetrator.
Restorative Justice
- Originated with Native and Indigenous Peoples’ practices for communal conflict mediation.
- Incidents are viewed as a violation of a person, persons, or community.
- The focus is on repairing the harm that has been done.
Transformative Justice
- Developed in the late 1990’s as an adaptation of restorative justice and alternative to policing.
- Incidents are viewed as a result of social systems and societal norms.
- The focus is on systemic change to prevent future incidents.
