The Voices and Faces Project
In the third week of April, Wheaton College held “Voices” week, “a time to remember those who have no voice and pray for the marginalized grops of the world by hearing the stories of often-unheard voices.”
On Thursday evening of that week, Anne Ream, a rape survivor and key participant in the Voices and Faces Project, came to the campus to speak in a forum called “From the Inside: What We Can Learn From Rape Survivors.” I met Anne and learned from her.
What is the purpose of the Voices and Faces Project?
According to the Voices and Faces Project website, “The mission is to create a national network of survivors willing to stand up and speak out about sexual violence … The belief is that to stop rape we need to start talking and … the initiatives are political, cultural, and creative.”
What does the project accomplish?
The project specifically invites sexual assault survivors to complete its survey, which can be accessed, downloaded, and returned online.
The survey is helping to build a permanent archive of survivor stories as well as give shape to presentations, books, and photographic exhibits intended to help survivors, raise community awareness, and influence the creation of laws and policies pertaining to sexual violence. The survey helps to make visible the otherwise often invisible trauma of sexual assault.
I completed the survey this week, and I believe it would be very worthwhile for other assault survivors to complete it as well.
PRAY for Anne Ream and the extraordinary work of the Voices and Faces Project.
