Our Herstory
In 1983, eight women formed the Ottawa Sexual Assault Support Centre (SASC). They didn’t have much – a $40 donation, a rented post office box, and a month’s pager service – but they had a vision. Making a commitment to working collectively, they vowed to provide services to incest survivors, to create a lesbian-positive centre, to engage in political action, and to develop a centre run by and for survivors. At the time, the idea of a survivor directed model was radical and controversial. In the Ottawa-Carleton region, SASC was the first to implement such a model, incorporating the experience and knowledge of survivors in all aspects of support work. Providing services to incest survivors was also controversial at the time, yet SASC was the first to offer self-help support groups to incest survivors, as well as to children.
Our Approach
Today, SASC is unique in its ongoing commitment to working collectively and taking a survivor-directed approach. Working within a survivor-directed framework means that all work and training is based on survivors’ experiences and knowledge. Instead of seeing survivors as unfit to provide support, SASC acknowledges and values the immense knowledge and expertise that is possessed by women who have had these experiences. SASC recognizes the importance of sharing this experience and knowledge relating to violence against women, and how giving survivors a voice works to break the feelings of isolation and increase the strength and solidarity among all women.
By working as a collective, SASC rejects the very type of hierarchical social structures responsible for many of our society’s oppressions. In a collective, all women have an equal voice and equal power in decision-making. In a collective, all members share tasks, rewards and mistakes. Instead of being individually oriented, a collective structure gains its strength from the individual differences in knowledge and skills of its members. Tasks and skills are shared among all collective members, and all work positions are treated equally, meaning power is not concentrated in the hands of a few. Rather, all women’s work is valued equally.
The decision to work as a collective is an integral part of SASC’s identity, because it stems from and reflects the very philosophies and politics that SASC is built on. As a grassroots feminist organization, SASC’s main objective is to end violence against women and children. SASC sees this type of violence as being about power, control, and domination (all the things that working collectively seeks to reject), and includes the larger context of all forms of violence. It is impossible to isolate violence against women from other oppressions, because women do not exist separate from other identities, such as those based on race, class, sexual preference, ability, etc. Therefore, a commitment to ending violence against women also involves a commitment to end all other forms of oppression. Anti-oppression work is thus integral to all work carried out at SASC.
Our Approach
Today, SASC is unique in its ongoing commitment to working collectively and taking a survivor-directed approach. Working within a survivor-directed framework means that all work and training is based on survivors’ experiences and knowledge. Instead of seeing survivors as unfit to provide support, SASC acknowledges and values the immense knowledge and expertise that is possessed by women who have had these experiences. SASC recognizes the importance of sharing this experience and knowledge relating to violence against women, and how giving survivors a voice works to break the feelings of isolation and increase the strength and solidarity among all women.
By working as a collective, SASC rejects the very type of hierarchical social structures responsible for many of our society’s oppressions. In a collective, all women have an equal voice and equal power in decision-making. In a collective, all members share tasks, rewards and mistakes. Instead of being individually oriented, a collective structure gains its strength from the individual differences in knowledge and skills of its members. Tasks and skills are shared among all collective members, and all work positions are treated equally, meaning power is not concentrated in the hands of a few. Rather, all women’s work is valued equally.
The decision to work as a collective is an integral part of SASC’s identity, because it stems from and reflects the very philosophies and politics that SASC is built on. As a grassroots feminist organization, SASC’s main objective is to end violence against women and children. SASC sees this type of violence as being about power, control, and domination (all the things that working collectively seeks to reject), and includes the larger context of all forms of violence. It is impossible to isolate violence against women from other oppressions, because women do not exist separate from other identities, such as those based on race, class, sexual preference, ability, etc. Therefore, a commitment to ending violence against women also involves a commitment to end all other forms of oppression. Anti-oppression work is thus integral to all work carried out at SASC.
