Our vision
We want a world without sexual violence where all women and girls live safely, freely and with dignity.
Our mission
We work for women and girls, in partnership with our member centres, to:
➡️ Transform attitudes about sexual violence and abuse.
➡️ Improve responses for all victims and survivors.
➡️ End sexual violence and abuse in all its forms.
How we do it
To achieve our mission, we believe that Rape Crisis England & Wales has a crucial role to play in:
- Believing victims and survivors, and helping them to get their voices heard.
- Fighting for victims and survivors to have access to specialist support.
- Raising awareness about the prevalence and impacts of sexual violence and abuse, and challenging rape culture.
- Influencing change in all aspects of public policy relating to sexual violence and abuse.
We are committed to intersectional feminism, anti-racism and anti-oppression.
Our strategic priorities 2022-25
Ensuring survivors can access support
We will fight for all women and girls to have access to specialist sexual violence and abuse services, and work alongside them to make sure that their voices are heard.
Supporting member Rape Crisis centres
We will offer support to members that is aimed at helping them to improve the lives of survivors.
Influencing change
We will push to influence policy, practice and public opinion for the benefit of all victims and survivors, and our member centres. This will involve standing up to those in power and making sure that they listen to the voices of women and girls.
Developing our organisation
We will make sure that how we work is in line with our intersectional feminist and anti-racist values. This will involve understanding how power operates in our organisation, making sure that our governance body (our board) is representative, diverse and fit for purpose, and lifting up the next generation of the Rape Crisis movement's leaders.
We will sustainably grow the resources we need to achieve our goals and make real change.
Our values
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As a feminist organisation, we fight for equity so that all women and girls can live free from violence and discrimination. We aspire to an anti-racist intersectional approach, which emerged from the work of Black feminists and women of colour.
We work to understand and address how gender inequality interlinks with other inequalities, including racism, age oppression, class oppression, ableism, homophobia and xenophobia. This allows us to understand the specific impacts of sexual violence and abuse, and ensures that our work is relevant for all women and girls.
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We take a strengths-based approach, recognising that women and girls are the experts in their own lives.
At every stage of a victim or survivor's journey, we aim to lift them up, support them and build their confidence. We believe this is key to helping survivors regain control of their own lives, as well as to challenging the gender inequality that underpins sexual violence and abuse.
We are committed to naming and understanding power structures, both inside and outside of our organisation, and to taking action when we see harmful uses of power.
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We work in solidarity with others who oppose violence and oppression. We create a culture of mutual support and collaboration in our organisation, as well as across our network and in partnership with others, so that we become bigger than the sum of our parts.
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The Rape Crisis movement was created, and continues to develop, through the determination and innovation of victims and survivors.
Victims and survivors are at the heart of everything we do, and we always listen to and believe them.
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We are bold and brave because we have to be. Nothing less will do if we want to end the deep and widespread misogyny in our society that's harming the lives of women and girls.
This means we speak truth to power, are prepared to take risks, and don't shy away from conflict and difficult issues.
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We recognise that an approach centred on empathy and love is a deeply radical act in a violent and oppressive world.
As part of this, we celebrate difference, honour our own personal experiences of sexual violence and value each other for who we are. We also aim to build trust, show respect and create a culture that encourages us to care for each other and ourselves.
