With the long-term vision of creating a world that better supports survivors, API Chaya's Natural Helpers program is a leadership development and education program that supports community members in learning about human trafficking, domestic and sexual violence, the societal forces that create conditions for violence, as well as in skill building around how to respond to harm, injustice, and support survivors.
We know that when survivors face abuse, they first turn to their close networks. With the long-term vision of creating a world that better supports survivors, the Natural Helpers (NH) training is intended to provide a beginner's framework for understanding systems of oppression with a deep focus on gender-based violence and community responses. the NH curriculum will cover Domestic Violence, Human Trafficking, Sexual Assault & Prevention, Disability Justice, and more. The goal is to cultivate a foundation of shared language and understanding with this cohort around how to support survivors of abuse and how to address and prevent harm and violence in your own lives and communities. NH aims to continue fostering a volunteer community who are invested in deepening their skills by practicing with each other and continuing to learn together beyond this training.
Priya Rai writes of the program, "The NH model nurtures natural community leaders and offers tools and frameworks to heal from and respond to violence on an individual level while seeking to transform the root causes that allow that violence to happen in the first place. The vision of the NH program is rooted in community organizing, in building and shifting power. We offer train-the-trainer sessions for people who want to take the NH model into their own communities. It can be adapted, changed, and molded to the specific needs of the place, group, and community working together to end intimate harm. We are deeply committed to recognizing leadership in multiple forms, as well as building collectively. We recognize that this work is most effective when people are doing it with their own folks — approaching violence intervention and prevention in culturally specific ways, in the same native languages, from the same perspective and social context. We see all community members as grassroots leaders; as agents of change; as the solution to make the world we want."
Source:
Priya Rai, API Chaya’s Natural Helper Model: From local brilliance to national and international impacts, International Examiner, March 24, 2020.