Projects

Domestic Abuse Survivors

We have been running courses and follow up sessions in Port Talbot since 2021. We have a permanent training room with our own office, wellbeing room and kitchen in Sandfields. We run regular courses here. 

We are working towards creating a permanent project space in Llanelli and this is funded by People’s Health Trust, using money raised through Health Lottery Wales, and Dyfed Powys Office of the Police & Crime Commissioner. We have run one 2024 course in Llanelli already, we're looking forward to the next one and setting up regular follow-up sessions. We are supremely grateful to these two funders for believing in what we do and helping us to support more women.

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These courses are for anyone who has lived through domestic abuse; historic or recent. People who work or volunteer with domestic abuse survivors are also welcome to attend these courses. 

Rape and Sexual Abuse Survivors

We are currently training our team on working with rape and sexual abuse survivors. This is critical as we want to ensure everything we do is fully trauma informed and has the fullest possible support behind it. 

We believe that trauma informed self-defence can make a lifechanging difference to people who have been raped, sexually abused or violated in any other sexual way.

Women in Prostitution

After refusals from several funders, with funding from The Allen Lane Foundation, we ran a pioneering project with Streetlight UK, who specialise in working with women in prostitution.

This involved running an online training session with all staff and volunteers followed by a full day, face to face training session in which staff and volunteers learnt basic self-defence skills and developed an awareness of the law regarding self-defence in the UK.

We then created a training video for future staff and volunteers and a workbook which we designed so it can be easily used to get parts of Physical Empowerment directly to the women that Streetlight UK work with.

​If you are an organisation that works with women in prostitution, please get in touch and see how we can help you.

Teenagers

There is a high occurrence of anxiety and depression in teenagers. This frequently goes hand in hand with self-harming and other traumatising behaviour. There is often a history of domestic violence somewhere in the family history.

The community in Port Talbot asked us to provide something for teenagers so in partnership with Community Ventures Port Talbot CIC, we used a start-up grant from CVS to train volunteers and run various focus groups with teenagers in 2022.​

We are in the process of applying for further funding to run teenage projects and offer regular follow-up sessions. 

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Seniors

No matter our age, we’re all faced with major challenges throughout our lives. The ageing process can make physical responses to stress more difficult. Trauma that tends to come together with getting older can be things such as having to move out of your lifelong home (transitional trauma), loss of a partner, a decline in physical, emotional and mental health or that feeling of being a ‘spare part’ in society.

We have developed a strong working partnership with Age Connects Neath Port Talbot and have run several Physical Empowerment training sessions with the groups of seniors they support across the area. We tend to cover a basic introduction to emotional, mental and physical self-defence and always get great feedback.

Some of the ladies who have themselves completed a Physical Empowerment course ​have been and helped teach the senior groups. This has been a brilliant experience for everyone involved and a great example of intergenerational empowerment..