For International Women's Day 2019, The Survivors Trust wanted to send a message to every woman and girl who has ever experienced rape or sexual violence at any point in their lives. Although The Survivors Trust supports all survivors, no matter their sex or gender, on this day we wanted to celebrate the strength of female survivors in particular. It is estimated that in the last year, 561,000 women experienced sexual assault. We wanted to let everyone of them, and every female survivor who has ever been abused, that they are strong, loved and believed.

That's why for International Women's day 2019, we brought our giant blow up elephant to our local Women's Well-being event and collected messages of support for our female survivors. 

Our blow up elephant is a physical representation of the saying 'the elephant in the room.' No one wants to talk about sexual violence and yet it is endemic within our society. The elephant acts as a great way of drawing people in and engaging with them about a difficult and often avoided topic of conversation. On this evening, we asked every woman who attended to write a message of support to a survivor and stick it on the elephant. We were so inspired and grateful for what we received. Thank you to everyone at the Rugby Seroptimist's Womens Well-Being Evening at Lawrence Sheriffs School for expressing your support for survivors in such beautiful and eloquent words.