Inviting survivors to participate is the easy part. Making that participation meaningful, safe, well-supported, trauma-informed and genuinely influential is the work. That requires structure long before anyone walks into a room; planning includes thoughtful consideration of how people are identified, what they are told to expect, what protections exist if something goes wrong, and whether their input actually changes a decision or simply gets recorded alongside it.
I build and run survivor advisory councils, delegations, and consultation processes for organizations operating at the local, national, and global level, carrying the work from initial outreach through the engagement itself and the reflection that follows. My experience spans engagements and partnerships across multiple continents and cultures, reflecting the global reach this work requires.
This practice draws on experience co-creating and serving as Vice Chair of the FIFA Foundation’s YourSide Independent Panel, chairing SafeSport International’s Athlete Voice for Safe Sport group, designing and facilitating the Keep Kids Safe Survivor Roundtable to shape a national policy blueprint, and early involvement with the Brave Movement’s Global Steering Group. Central to centering survivors and being responsive to lived experience is being clear about expectations, pace, and confidentiality, as well as providing a trauma-informed structure for engagement, which can include difficult conversations and even moments that can re-traumatize.
Note: I use the term survivor in this context to refer to people with lived experience of abuse and those impacted by similar harms. That said, when working with survivors directly, it’s critical to offer space for each person to share how they prefer to be identified. Not everyone who has experienced abuse or harm is comfortable with the terms victim or survivor. How someone refers to themselves should guide how you identify them. And how a survivor defines themselves may change over time.
Picture this: Your organization wants to bring survivor voices from inception to execution into a major policy moment, international conference, or national advocacy campaign, but you’ve never built a survivor council or coordinated a delegation, and you are worried about getting it wrong.
