Self-Advocacy for Women & Teens with Disabilities

Chimes Israel's self-advocacy and empowerment program for women and girls has had 51 direct participants. They include 10 at our Enoch afterschool program for girls and young women and 41 women at our employment centers. 

The project’s overall objective is to create a change in participant knowledge, ability, and attitude toward a better understanding of themselves, relationships, and sexuality, and the ability to protect themselves and/or seek help against harmful, abusive, violent, or exploitative relationships. 

The qualitative results from our pre- and post workshop surveys proved that the group intervention led to positive and significant changes. There were marked changes in their sense of competence and attitudes regarding independence and relationships.

We have learned that the program is equally, if not more important for girls. While women with disabilities experience almost double the rate of sexual exploitation, violence, and psychological abuse than those without disabilities, nearly half of the abuse begins before the age of 15. We have been tirelessly fundraising to launch more sessions of our groundbreaking Self Advocacy & Empowerment program for girls/young women with disabilities in our after-school programs. We are now funded for one workshop in 2025. The Argaman Institute, Israel’s foremost expert in therapeutic and social responses to issues related to human sexuality, emotional states, trauma, crisis, and behavioral difficulties, will lead the workshop.

The workshop creates a safe, supportive space where girls with disabilities can find their voices and reclaim their power. The girls learn about body health, hygiene, and sexuality, as well as self-awareness and confidence through debunking beauty ideals and gender socialization. Most critically, the workshop focuses on self-awareness, consent, and abuse. They learn to recognize, avoid, and seek help against exploitation. The program is life-changing because it prepares them for adulthood as a woman with disabilities where they are not exactly privileged. The transformative program has proven to improve girl’s confidence, self-awareness, and ability to recognize and protect themselves from abusive situations.

We know that helping girls and women is not enough; the cultural environment that engenders abuse also has to change. We cannot change the world, but we learned that we can have a bigger influence over what happens within our center walls. This is significant, because this is where our service recipients spend most of their days. Therefore, we are launching a new program to promote organization-wide awareness of exploitation and trauma.

Addressing the fact that abuse is overlooked in institutional or service settings, we seek to lead the field in promoting an organizational trauma and exploitation-conscious culture. This Organization-wide Trauma and Exploitation Awareness project in collaboration with the Argaman Institute, will intervene at all levels of the organization: employees, service recipients, and families.

Our staff will be able to identify when our beneficiaries are subject to abuse and intervene with sensitivity. In addition, our beneficiaries and their families will have a deep understanding of the issue and have at their disposal, preventative tools to avoid exposure to these issues. To enable a response to the entire population receiving the service, the content will be accessible to all cognitive levels.

The Trauma and Exploitation Awareness will be included in the organization's quality policy, in a way that communicates the importance of our organization-wide focus on providing services with a sensitivity toward beneficiary exploitation and trauma.