GIDNA. Psychological assistance for women who survived sexual violence during the war

Our foundation launched the Gidna project to provide psychological assistance to women who have faced or witnessed sexual violence by the russian military. 

According to international statistics, about 92% of rapes committed since the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine still remain unreported. The total number of such crimes can reach tens of thousands of cases.

Women survivors of violence can remain silent for years, avoiding condemnation and stigmatization. This can lead to severe post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and the development of drug and alcohol addictions. In addition, the mental state of the affected women negatively affects their relationships with relatives and can destroy their lives. Only qualified psychological help can prevent the negative consequences of trauma experience.

Providing such assistance is the goal of our Gidna project. For this, experienced psychotherapists who specialize in this type of trauma offer a course of 10 anonymous consultations aimed at regaining psychological stability and a sense of control over one's own life.

We involved 11 female psychotherapists with many years of practical experience in the initiative. All of them received special training from a colleague Ruth Dorum of the Israel Trauma Coalition (ITC), to work with the trauma of sexual violence. This association of non-governmental organizations was founded in 2001 to help communities in Israel and around the world to overcome the mental consequences of various kinds of disasters, in particular, wars. ITC conducts training programs aimed at improving self-help skills both for individual communities and for the entire community to minimize the development of post-traumatic symptoms, replace the need for drugs and maximize resilience to mental trauma. In addition to training, the ITC also conducts supervision for female psychotherapists of the Gidna project.

A woman who has survived sexual violence can anonymously contact the project website, fill out a questionnaire and receive a course of 10 consultations. Consultations can be obtained online: with the camera on or without, as desired. Also, residents of Kyiv, Dnipro, Zhytomyr, Zaporizhzhia, Lviv, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Chernivtsi, and Kharkiv can visit a psychotherapist in person at offline sessions.

The goal of our Gidna project for 2023 is to assist 200 women. Anyone can join and support the initiative on our website.