Thanks for taking time to learn about our work. This article looks at how our Survivor School has been equipping survivors rebuild their life after their trauma, and strive toward living a successful independent life! You can also find out more about our 2021 plans for the volunteer movement. Enjoy!
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Trauma Informed Classes
September classes included: English Conversation, Advanced English, Work Ready, Health & Self Care, Computers, And, plenty of one-on-one tutoring for those in Tafe.
Welfare support also continued as an essential component of our work. With many Survivors still seeking employment guidance, life coaching and accommodation support. Through the Freedom Hub’s intensive support, (via our upper level classes – Work Ready, Advanced English, and tailored 1:1 Tutoring support); we were able to assist Survivors in improving their employability pathways.
Our Survivor Mums are also continuing to be supported through bi-weekly coffee chats. With several of them also having face-to-face play-dates. We have also been donated nappies and toys to help them with the continued help of our partner, Good360.
One of our survivors who was accepted into an Assistant in Nursing Program with an employment pathway at Macquarie Hospital. She is attending regularly with excellent engagement, and attending the Freedom Hub for tutoring support as needed. We have regular meetings with the program coordinators to continue our positive collaborations with TAFE, Taldumande Youth Services, and NSW Health. You can read more about her story here.
We also continue our advocacy in schools and last month we hosted an an online presentation about Modern Slavery with a year ten student group from Emmanuel School.
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Trauma Relief Workshops and Socialisation
Our current ‘crisis care’ survivors and all our other survivors, including alumni, are invited to join our workshops and outings. This is the socialisation side of our work. Not only is this great for mental health, but is is essential to make friends and feel included. Loneliness is a common symptom when you have been through extreme trauma. You never feel like anyone understands you, and you can very focussed on your own immediate needs.
In September we ran trauma informed yoga workshops, online coffee chats and took survivors on outings. You can read about one of the school holiday picnics we took our survivors on here.
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Digital Inclusion Project
This project is flying ahead. This month we have an additional 10 laptops loaded with Microsoft Office and data packs from Optus. This means 10 more survivors will take leaps ahead. These are survivors who don’t have access to wifi and laptops. They can join classes and zoom meetings with our trauma informed classes and teachers. We are in the process of sourcing and buying the next 10 laptops. Thanks to the generosity of MANY donors, and grants from City of Sydney, Vivcoart, Westpac, Service NSW, and City of Gold Coast we have been able to set these survivors up for success. Our goal is that we can set up 100 survivors with the ability to join our life changing trauma informed work ready and life skills courses.
We now have a vision to expand our service interstate and potentially overseas. But that can wait till 2021!
As a result, the Survivor School’s current additional workload is further development of our classes to move online. We are uploading the Survivor School classes into our new online education portal. This involves not only uploading our current curriculum, but also adapting our content to a more interactive student-friendly virtual platform. It needs to remain trauma informed but also very illustrative for students who have English as their second language. So we are extra videos and other interactive activities.
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Current Survivor Needs
Our biggest needs right now (and for a while!) is to be able to help survivors get online. This requires laptops and data as described above. The goal is 100 survivors online, we currently have 20 laptops ready and some distributed. A refurbished laptop through our partner Connecting up is between $500 & $700 you can donate this here. Ongoing data per survivor is $25 a month, you can donate that here.
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(NEW!) Volunteer Program
In the past we have had a large passionate volunteer movement of 55 to 65 people. We will be forever be grateful for them as they built the Freedom Hub to where it is today. With our reduction in staff (due to covid) we no longer have the ability to manage these large numbers. So we are now planning a NEW structure, that will allow us to expand across Australia.
We are looking for a few key Volunteer Regional Ambassadors with the leadership skills required to manage a small team of volunteers. As we appoint these ambassadors we will be able to take on more volunteers. Therefore in 2021 we will grow our volunteer movement slowly and intentionally with specific roles to build across Australia and potentially in Asia/Pacific. Having our Survivor School online allows us to now partner with other NGO’s to take on the crisis work for survivors in region and we provide the rehabilitation and long term care with our new volunteer movement.
If you would like to apply to be an ambassador, we would love to hear from you here. (See the link below if you would like to volunteer)
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Join our Community
If you would like to volunteer, contact us here.
Or if you would like to get our monthly up date, opt in here.
If you would like to support a survivor, donate here. (tax deductible)
SO THANK YOU FOR TAKING THE TIME TO READ OUR BLOG XX (Please review it or share it with others.
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