Burned out and disillusioned by their experience of working in mainstream charities for women who have survived sexual violence, Megan Baker and Bryony Ball decided they could do better.
So after taking some well-earned rest they set up SLEEC (Survivors Leading Essential Education & Change), a radical support organisation that started with an Instagram account challenging harmful and reductive narratives, and now has its sights on changing the system and dismantling the roots of male violence.
Lofty ambitions for sure. So what does meeting them look like in practice?
For SLEEC it has meant developing a model distinct from those pursued by most charities, which, Meg and Bryony argue, rely on a set group of people deciding who deserves their help, what that looks like and how it is distributed. SLEEC’s work has instead been built around mutual aid principles, which do not depend on people having to jump through hoops to demonstrate they meet the parameters for support.
The organisation now offers a range of services, from online support spaces set up to challenge and redefine the idea of what such spaces can be, to the School Of Care, Liberation & Disruption – workshops that “heal, liberate and disrupt through learning, knowledge shares, action and care”. Since 2021, it has also put on group meetings for men looking to unpack their relationship to the patriarchy and harmful masculinity.
With so many men purporting to be the good guys, why then is it so tricky to get men through the doors of said sessions? And why can so few of those who do show up actually express how it feels to be male?
Your hosts, Priyanka Raval and a squirming Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins, dive with Bryony and Meg into these – and plenty more – uncomfortable questions, in an umissable second episode of People Just Do Something season two.
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