About us

Every victim and survivor of sexual assault has a right to be heard, believed with access to justice and closure. We at Chayn want to help survivors get closure and move forward with their lives.

Your Story Matters.

Your Story Matters (YSM) is a groundbreaking webapp providing safe, timely and relevant support and resources for survivors of sexual assault. Forget endless searches with conflicting results. YSM, co-created with survivors, centres the needs of survivors and brings all necessary info under one roof - or webapp - keeping it simple and accessible.

Who funded the project

Many people have worked together to make the creation and implementation of YSM possible, including our funders who saw the importance of this project and helped bring it into existence.

In 2019, we were awarded a grant by Nesta and the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to develop and test a prototype for our idea through the Tech to Connect Challenge. After the success of our prototype, we were awarded the final prize in March of 2020 to continue the development of this work.

We are continuously building and iterating our product, to bring our resources to more survivors across the globe. If you are a funder interested in funding this work, please get in touch with us at [email protected].

About Chayn

We are Chayn, an award-winning open-source organisation that leverages technology to support women tackling violence and oppression so they can live happier and healthier lives.

We are a diverse, global volunteer network of over 400 volunteers from 15 countries. Many of us are survivors of abuse. Together, we hope to reach victims and survivors all over the world by giving them the critical information they need to take control of their lives. We hope to remind victims and survivors that they are not alone in what they are going through.

Founded in 2013, Chayn has a strong footprint in the UK, with dedicated country chapters in Italy, Pakistan and India. We know amazing things can happen if we co-create solutions with survivors. Over the last seven years, Chayn reached more than 360,000 people in more than 12 countries. We’re not only creating better resources for all but also helping survivors on their path to restore their self-respect and confidence.

Currently, we’re running our Bloom project, a free web-based service designed for anyone who is currently experiencing or has experienced domestic and sexual abuse. If you would like to learn more about us, you can see our latest Impact Report or check us out on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can also read more about our work on our Medium page.

Vision

YSM was started by our volunteers, who experienced sexual assault and domestic abuse. We know how hard it can be to get justice, or how survivors are treated once they come forward in public. We simply want to create a better system for survivors – with survivors.

Though information exists on what to do and where to go, it’s often fragmented and hard to navigate. Stigma, fear of being judged, and a lack of trust in institutions, especially among vulnerable groups, also contribute to survivors not coming forward. Therefore, our vision with YSM is to ensure that survivors everywhere have easy access to non-judgemental information and support to help them after an assault.

YSM provides survivors with inclusive resources to support them mentally and emotionally, as well as help them navigate difficult and challenging aspects of surviving abuse, such as deciding to report or reaching out to others. We created YSM with the understanding that every person moves forward in their own way, so the information offers a varied array of topics, considerations, and helpful thoughts, without overwhelming them, so survivors can choose what is best for them personally.

YSM works as a webapp companion for women through all stages in their path to recovery, whether it is a one-off incident or ongoing. It brings together all kinds of resources in multiple languages, as well as signposts to organisations to talk to. For anyone wishing to come forward, YSM provides you with a helpful tool to track your progress through the criminal justice system and tailored guidance on the steps the police will follow to launch your complaint or report.

Our hope at Chayn is that YSM will be the world’s largest collaborative resource for survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assault, launching initially in the UK and India.

Our journey so far

We started on our discovery, codesigning with survivors and identifying key content for YSM. We researched and wrote content based on the needs of the survivors we’re aiming to support, creating a secure repository for crowdsourced information, whilst ensuring individuals' privacy and security. This helped us to develop and test a prototype for our idea, built with survivors, and iterate our product development based on the insights we gained. In March this year we were awarded a grant to continue the development of this work, and off we went! We focused on three phases: the survivors' journey, pain-relieving and impact and accountability. First piloting in the UK, the app will be a global resource that will help those everywhere navigate their own country's laws and regulations.