Through our Big Lottery Women and Girls Community Engagement & Building Project (BLCP) we have been walking alongside non-professional community members, professional communities who work with marginalised women (older, disabled and multiple disadvantaged women), Black and minoritised communities, survivors of domestic abuse as well as enterprising women who have made a difference in other sectors from across Brighton and Hove, to initiate and harness innovative and meaningful ways to eradicate domestic abuse. We want to capitalise on the success of our social change approach to extend our reach out to survivors and community members in East Sussex and to offer a hopeful way forward for our highly pressured sector.
Communities Rising is fundamentally a proposal by our communities, for our communities. RISE grew out of grass roots community action, over the years, in common with many organisations, it has become professionalised. Whilst it is important that RISE continues to provide expert support to help manage risk and support recovery, this has created something of a lack of opportunities for members of our community, who have for years been expressing their desire to be more involved in activism, services, and awareness raising. This project gives voice to and harnesses those desires, and the huge reserves of energy that underpin them.
The initiatives that the community have told us have worked and that they want more of have been collated under four project streams which all work together to create community-led and sustainable change.
Find out more about the project here.