6/22/2021
Every 68 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted.
On average, there are 463,634 victims (age 12 or older) of rape and sexual assault each year in the United States.
Founded in 1973 by a collective of women committed to anti-racist feminist principles, SFWAR provides resources, support, advocacy, and education to strengthen the work of all individuals and communities in San Francisco that are responding to, healing from, and struggling to end sexual violence. They believed strongly in the leadership of survivors and working to end rape.
The Community Initiatives (CI) program is one of many programs and services offered by SFWAR. CI provides both youth and adult rape prevention education and supports communities in mobilizing to confront, reduce, and ultimately end sexual violence.
CI activities include
In addition, CI coordinates three community-specific organizing projects – STAND (Students Talking About Non-violent Dating), the Peer-2-Peer Outreach & Organizing Project, and the Life Healing Project.
The founders of SFWAR understood sexual assault to be a weapon of oppression used to subordinate marginalized communities. Therefore, it became their task to challenge systems of oppression designed to control and exploit specific groups of people to benefit other groups. They believe no single individual, organization, institution, foundation, or business can stop the epidemic of sexual violence. By organizing as a whole community, we collectively each bring our pieces of the solution.