Rebuilding Lives… A Place. A Space.

We need your support for Feminenza’s new International Education Centre!

We are an international network of charities, passionate about helping women and girls to reignite their inner fire and take charge of their lives, and youth and communities in distress to reset, heal and rebuild. With 500 volunteers, over 22 years, we have assisted eleven thousand lives a year, as well as trained and mentored community groups, youth workers, NGOs and charities in 19 countries. This is the first time we have sought funding beyond our own membership or institutional donors such as UN WOMEN. Most of our work we have funded ourselves.

We are seeking funding to equip an education facility in Norfolk, UK, with one purpose: to enable more lives, and more communities, to benefit from a five-fold improvement in accessibility and continuing support, face to face and online.

Why this Fundraiser?

A recent survey of community, youth and charity workers serving challenged and marginalized groups uncovered the fact that almost two thirds of these workers had a prior history of primary or secondary trauma. Mental health risks continue to outpace population growth. In response we have purchased a £1.5 million facility in Norfolk, UK and are busy converting it into an education centre.

Built in 1837, it offers 9.5 acres of woodland and 825 sqm for workshops and offices. It is already allowing us to extend support to many more lives per year, and enabling local communities to have direct access; it is boosting the quality of professional development for charities around the world to care for the disadvantaged, deprived and traumatized. It is providing assistance, face to face and online, across the UK, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, North America, Australia and New Zealand.

In addition to providing training and education, we can now improve access to mentoring and counselling, to extend much more of our know-how; and enable a five-fold increase in:

• The number of people benefiting from our work, face to face and online.

• The range of NGOs, charities, local and international communities and cultures able to benefit, ensuring sustainability.

• Partners: local and foreign NGOs and charities as we work towards a more humane world.

• Supporting content (workbooks, videos, podcasts).

What are the funds raised going to be used for?

The property is old. There’s a lot of work needed to enable it to deliver on our goals: to fix a large roof which leaks; a very large sewage system to be made safe, meeting present day standards; windows with extensive rot to be replaced; wiring and fire safety systems to be installed; heating, plumbing and sewage to be repaired. The original damp course (from 1837) was unfortunately breached when the grounds were artificially raised, causing extensive damp.

Huge progress has been made. Through GoFundMe and our own channels, with volunteers from Britain, Europe, the Americas and New Zealand, (over 90% women), we’ve spent over £100K on repairs, fixed 40% of the plumbing, a third of the electrical wiring, restored eleven windows, restored protected woodland and trees, and enabled the sewage treatment plant to function again. Nine thousand hours have been volunteered so far, with a further 4000 booked for the end of 2023 and 2024. This has immediately made possible the thousands of hours of public assistance not previously available.

In late 2023 and 2024, we need to fund certified professionals to:

• Complete the second phase of roof repairs. (£12,500)

• Complete the repairs to the 22,000 gallon sewage treatment infrastructure and meet environmental standards. (£14,600)

• Replace aging wiring and add fire safety systems (£16,500)

• Replace 65 rotting windows (£56,000) with environmentally sustainable sourced, triple glazed secure solutions.

• Continue the project to uncover the original damp proof course, presently buried under 50 tons of soil. (£7,500)

This year we are seeking £107,100 to ensure the facility is safe, functional and capable of operating at above 2/3rds of its full capacity. If the funds raised exceed this figure, the additional funds will go towards adding security systems for the vulnerable at the facility and assist with replacing the aged heating systems with eco alternatives.

About Feminenza

First established in the UK in 2000, then in Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Kenya, Netherlands, New Zealand, USA, we have 500 volunteers working towards a more humane world. Our work includes:

(i) helping women to take charge of their lives, and develop the skills of leadership.

(ii) helping post-conflict and disadvantaged communities to let go of the past, rebuild, reset, heal, and forgive.

(iii) rescue, rehabilitation, restoration of dignity and self-respect, trauma healing and education - our response to abuse, suppression, forced marriage and female genital mutilation.

(iv) providing tools and mentoring for community and charity workers with, or at risk of, primary or secondary traumatic stress, re-establishing inside-out resilience.

(v) counselling and support for the bereaved and dying.

(vi) equipping women and men to lead sustainable trauma healing/community resilience projects in their communities, to learn, unshakeably so, that they can make a continuing difference.

(vii) developing and mentoring staff in community groups, NGOs, charities, especially those working in post-conflict environments and human rights settings.

Our work has been warmly received, independently reviewed and supported by international aid agencies (UNESCO, UN WOMEN, SIDA, UKFCO, USAID), and by ECOSOC (assigning us UN Observer status for our work for the advancement of women in conflict-affected communities in Africa and the Middle East).

Here are some examples of our work

In the UK, in 2009, to assist with community cohesion, help raise awareness, and stimulate community engagement and discussion on forgiveness and reconciliation, we arranged concerts in Wales, Nottingham and London.

Two international ensembles – Thalia’s Whisper, a unique women’s choral group, and Ensemble Phoenix, a trio of violin, cello and guitar, together with Birmingham’s Ulfah Arts – set the atmosphere. The Forgiveness Project, renowned Israeli filmmaker Yulie Cohen, as well as Israeli and Palestinian speakers from the Families Forum-Bereaved Parents Circle led discussions.

Between 2003 and 2022 we continued to ramp up assistance to marginalised communities, prison inmates, youth in distress, women seeking refuge from forced marriage, abuse and battery, as well as community workers, youth and charity workers suffering from secondary traumatic stress. More recently, our volunteers have been asked to hold briefings for NHS, businesses and community groups to equip civil society to better respond to the needs of women who have recently given birth, and women in their peri-menopausal years.

In Ireland, we have assisted women in the Traveller community to take better charge of their lives and manage their fears.

Across Europe and the Middle East, we have led multiple EU-Erasmus+ projects, providing trauma healing competencies: in 2018 we worked with 15 youth workers from the UK and Europe. In 2020, triggered by the COVID lockdown, and as mental distress and abuse were peaking, we started using Zoom to provide weekly online courses (which are still ongoing). These assist as many as 80 youth workers from disparate communities in the UK, as well as all over Europe and the Middle East, including Israel, Jordan, Iraq, and Yemen, to become more effective in handling compassion fatigue.

Even during the lockdown, they continued to work with conflict refugees, survivors of trafficking, violence and abuse, disadvantaged youth, and marginalised migrant women and men trapped in the immigration and justice system. Almost 2/3rds of these participants were found to have a prior history of primary or secondary trauma and, following the workshops, recorded improved well-being privately (86%), professionally (80%), with 71% of those in their care reporting a benefit. 89% of participants were more able to let go, to forgive, to move on.

In Denmark, in 2014 and 2015, together with a youth and women’s centre in Denmark, we hosted the ‘Sisters of the World’ events and provided a setting for post conflict communities to meet and discuss issues relevant to their host communities.

In the Netherlands, In 2016 and 2017, we extended trauma healing workshops for Francophone African women refugees and survivors of domestic violence.

In Africa, for 150 NGOs referred by UNESCO Peer we led a 4-day conference ‘Humanity and Gender’ (2006) at the UN compound in Nairobi, sharing experiences, with gritty discussions on gender respect, FGM and the developing needs of youth and women in the Great Lakes Region of Africa.

In 2008, UN WOMEN commissioned us to respond to politically motivated violence as it flashed across Kenya, following the elections. Twenty one women, from areas in the Rift Valley with unprecedented bloodshed, surrounded by ongoing violence and a hostile political climate, were given assistance and training to deliver inside-out, person-to-person, ground-up reconciliation, forgiveness and peace, resulting in a time-critical change in resilience and community attitudes.

Levels of violence reduced markedly in the fourteen districts of their work. Some communities even worked at healing rifts which had festered for years. The work was internationally recognized: SIDA a leading development agency saw it as ‘a leading global example of the Security Council Resolution 1325 in action’. The work of those 21 women continues today, some have received national acclaim.

In 2015, USAID commissioned us to work with former ex-gang leaders in Kenya, men and women, assisting them in healing their own trauma, turning around their lives and using their influence to redevelop their communities.

In 2016, USAID’s DREAM (Determined, Resilient, Empowered, Aids-free, Mentored and Safe) programme asked us to work with 30 girls - all traumatized survivors of extreme gender-based violence - for a week. A subsequent Congressional review noted that our involvement had transformed lives; the girls we assisted went on to mentor and contribute significantly to other girls in their communities.

In 2017, as political extremism retook Kenya, we were commissioned by the UK FCO to work with 25 elders, chiefs, pastors, imams in the Nakuru district, to help them heal old divisions and build community resilience together with their youth, in the face of increasing violence. Their communities experienced peaceful elections.

In North America, In 2010, at the invitation of Rabbi Marcelo Bronstein, we ran a week-long series of forgiveness events at the B’nai Jeshurun synagogue in New York, culminating in an interfaith panel discussion about the role of forgiveness, with thought leaders of the post-9/11 Islamic, Jewish and Christian communities, including Reverend Lyndon Harris, Imam Shamsi Ali, and filmmaker Yulie Cohen.

In 2013-2014, in Peekskill, New York, girls aged 15 to 17 were assisted in taking charge of their lives and leading and implementing projects in their communities, including mentoring younger girls to withstand bullying, and initiating a recycling programme in their school.

In Israel, a course - ‘Gender Education and the Role of Forgiveness’ - was developed by Feminenza: a 2-semester course for M.A. students in the Gordon Teachers’ Training College in Haifa, Israel. It was delivered annually from 2014 – 2018 by Feminenza and the College. In 2019 we conducted a 2-day workshop at the Arab Teacher Training College (in Haifa, Israel) with 25 practicing pedagogical instructors on the role of forgiveness in value-based education and curricula development.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to email us at [email redactado], or visit our website www.feminenza.org