Survivor Support Sign-up 2023/24 SOAS 
Not The Only One is a unique initiative for students who have experienced sexual violence at any point in their life, including child sexual abuse. Our work is survivor-led and co-developed with students at a range of universities.

Throughout this academic year, we are offering workshops and survivor community spaces in collaboration with Student Advice and Wellbeing. Our events are open to SOAS students of any gender who have experienced any form of sexual violence, including sexual abuse in childhood. They will be run by a team of experienced facilitators and survivor-activists.

Both from our own experience as well as in our work with survivors, we have become aware of how important and helpful it can be for us to have spaces where we can ‘be’ as survivors. In our workshops, we explore different themes and issues that affect survivors at university and provide skills and support to respond. Our survivor community spaces are a place for SOAS students who have experienced sexual violence to come together for mutual support, to share experiences or just to have a chat.

You can sign up to as many events as you like. You can also come back to this form and sign up for more events throughout the year.

You can find more information about each event at the bottom of this page.
You will receive the room number (for in person events) or Zoom link (for online events) on the day of the event so make sure to check your emails!

We will only use the information you provide here to communicate with you about the events we run at SOAS this academic year and we will delete the information from this form at the end of the academic year.

Our events for term 1 are:
- Navigating friendships and relationships (online)
- Study skills (in person)
- Dealing with multiple oppressions (online)
- Trauma-informed movement and relaxation (in person)

Our events for term 2 are (signup will be available here over the winter break):
- 4 survivor community spaces: 2 online and 2 in person

In term 3, we will have one survivor community space.

Sign in to Google to save your progress. Learn more
Email *
Please provide your SOAS email so we can send you the room number / Zoom link on the day of each event.
Name (feel free to use your preferred name) *
Survivor community space (online):  Monday 6th May 1-2:30pm
Clear selection
Do you have any access needs? Please feel free to let us know anything that would help you attend.
More info about each event

Workshop: Survivors study skills
Being a survivor can make it difficult to focus on our studies, whether we are aware that this is because of trauma or not. In this workshop, we will explore what difficulties we might face, the physiological reasons behing this, some common strategies, and work with each other to create a plan tailored to each of us.

Workshop: Dealing with multiple oppressions as a survivor
Drawing on intersectionality, we will explore what it means to be a survivor while also experiencing other forms of oppression. There will be space to share the challenges this might bring for us, such as access to support spaces, representation of our experiences, or multiple layers of stigma. And we will also explore where and how we can find support and community.

Navigating friendships and relationships
Relating to family, friends, partners and colleagues is an important part of most people’s lives. In the run up to the break, we will discuss the challenges we can face as survivors in these relationships. We will explore what we might need from our relationships, including how we might want to share our stories, how to handle the relationships we find difficult, and how to build fulfilling ones.


Workshop: Trauma-informed movement & relaxation
Movement and relaxation can be important but they are often difficult to access for survivors. In this workshop, we will explore how we can connect to our body in a safe way through trauma-informed movement activities. We will try out different activities and look at how we can adapt these so they feel comfortable for us, as well as share some general tips on how we can deal with triggers and other barriers to accessing movement and relaxation.


Survivor community spaces
This a space for you to meet and speak with other survivors about your life at university or to just have a chat. It will be confidential and you can participate as much or as little as you want to.

FAQs

What do you mean by survivor?

We use 'survivor' as a common shorthand for a wide range of experiences, but we recognise that not everyone who has experienced sexual abuse might use 'survivor' as a self-description. At our survivor events, we welcome students who have experienced any form of sexual abuse at any time in their life. This can include things that happened in childhood or more recently. It could have been ongoing or happened once. It could include things that at the time we didn't realise were sexual abuse. If you are not sure whether your experience qualifies as sexual abuse, you are welcome to join anyway to learn more.

Do I have to talk about what happened to me?

The short answer: No. We will never ask you to share anything about what happened. Most of our workshops focus on dealing with issues we have as survivors in the here and now. That being said, of course past experiences can come up and attending survivor spaces can sometimes bring up memories. We will usually have a grounding activity at the end which can help dealing with anything that might have been triggering.

What happens if I am late to a workshop or community space?

We ask everyone who is attending to be there from the beginning and we usually open the space 5 minutes before the start time, both for online and in person events. To create a safe and supportive space, we always agree on a working alliance at the beginning of each event. We therefore can't let people in about five minutes after the start time.
A copy of your responses will be emailed to the address you provided.
Submit
Clear form
Never submit passwords through Google Forms.
reCAPTCHA
This form was created inside of Survivors Collective. Report Abuse