Building a digital recovery companion for survivors of sexual assault
By: Hera Hussain
Tags: Feminist Tech, Sexual Assault, Metoo, Violence Against Women, Tech For Good

“I didn’t tell anyone because I felt shame… as if it was my fault.”

After more than a year of extensive survivor-led research, continuous development, and all-round hard work, we at Chayn are incredibly humbled and excited to announce the launch of our web app — Your Story Matters (YSM). With this web app, we hope to change the way survivors of sexual assault can access resources and get the help they need. It is accessible from any browser on most digital devices!

Chayn’s been working on gender-based violence for over seven years. During this time, we’ve noticed and heard from our team and community how sexual trauma, most often experienced within domestic and familiar settings, can have a devastating and long-term impact.

When we asked our team and community, we heard almost everyone felt isolated, experienced self-shame, held back from telling others, and went online to make sense of what had happened. Of the few individuals (less than 20 percent) that reported an incident to the police, many found the experience re-traumatising and many said they would not want to go through it again if they could go back in time.

“They said…obviously we can’t prosecute that because there is no evidence.”

What a broken system.

A global tragedy.

While we can’t fix the legal system by ourselves (we’ll continue to champion those who advocate for it), we decided to provide a safe space for their recovery. Recovery, according to our research, is not linear and not finite. It can be life long. That’s what we’re building YSM for.

Whether it’s a helpline or a guide on recovery, the current resources available are hard to find, limited, and often cover similar topics. With this in mind, we wanted to create an app that collects useful, relevant information available and put it in one place.

When we first started this project, it was originally called YANA — You Are Not Alone. We changed the name because this phrase was used by many organisations and we wanted to make it easier for survivors to find us.

In true Chayn fashion, we learned as we built; discovering more relevant resources and learning about new ways to address survivors’ needs. Part of this process involved researching all of the existing resources available to survivors, interviewing community members and looking within our team’s own experience.

“I want to be able to move on from what happened to me as child. I want to be able to be in a relationship and not be afraid. Im… () and tired of having this sadness in my gut.“

Users are able to browse and save a rich, curated collection of trauma-informed content written by us and others.

The app includes:

A global directory with helplines, shelters and organisations that provides in-person support

Resources on emotional well being, sex and relationships, trauma resilience and accessing justice through the law

A map of all police and legal processes for reporting. Though this is for the UK only for now, we’re going to be expanding it with the help of our partners.

A breathing timer to ground us in moments of overwhelm

We wanted to take the pain out of searching for intersectional content. This research and verification process for non-Chayn resources was tough and to ensure our methodology was sound — we employed an external contractor to validate our work. This curation matrix formed the basis of what resources made the cut. It also enabled us to identify key gaps in existing resources which confirmed what we knew from our experiences.

“I didn’t tell anyone because I felt shame… as if it was my fault.”

Trauma informed, restorative design

We put care, iteration and compassion into every inch of this app like we’ve never done before. We baked everything we know about trauma-informed work into the user experience (UX). We designed for trust, plurality, agency, openness, solidarity, empathy and hope.

We went for a design and tone that builds trust for a long, mutually enriching and comforting friendship.

A community seeded with hope.

We experimented with different ways of organising the information, guiding people through set paths or letting them choose their own and the aesthetic which would communicate what we want:

We understand the devastating impact of trauma but know our lives don’t have to be defined by it.

That while society is hostile, our own minds can do that to us too and that our first priority of care is towards ourselves.

That healing is not linear. It can go up and down but no matter what, we’ll be here.

“The amount of detail the police wanted was really staggering.”

Aim to scale

In 2019, Chayn was awarded a grant by Nesta and the UK Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport through the Tech to Connect Challenge to develop and test a prototype for our idea. After the success of our prototype, we were awarded the final prize in March 2020 to continue the development of this work. We want to thank them for their support.

We know the demand for this is global so we’ve built it in such a way that it can serve a global audience, and can be rolled out to new regions. In fact, we’ve thought quite a lot about it which is why you’ll see very little Chayn branding. Though all of Chayn’s code is under a MIT license and content under a Creative Commons one, we want YSM to be a global collaborative effort with us supporting and coordinating the roll-outs, while managing the technical infrastructure. Interested in running YSM for your region? Check out our partnerships process here.

If you are a funder who would be interested in championing this work, do get in touch with us at team@chayn.co.

None of this would be possible without our global team, many of whom poured their pain into designing a space they needed.

They know who they are. Thank you.

— —

Much thanks to these people (in no particular order): Rebecca Louise Dell, Rosie Maguire, Satvika Khera Team: Beatriz Diaz, Carolina Moyano, Chloe Cross, Valentina Montagna, Lia Gill, Sadaf Udin, Gabby Borthwick, Alyson Kissner, Jessica Spraos, Disha Parekh, Flora Butler, Zoe Firth, Gunita Cheema, Nimisha Bhagat, Alyson Kissner, Tiffany Lo, Anu Panakkada, Snighdha Arora, Shelly Bensal, Huma Umar, Charlotte Seeley-Musgrave, Lee Ball, Parasuram Hanumanthu, Jiten Bhagat, Sophie Hebdidge, Rebecca Rae-Evans, Molly Ackhurst and Emma Hunter.