Hello everyone!
We hope you are well, it has been another busy year for Into The Light and we wanted to update you on some of the work we have been doing to support Survivors of Sexual abuse in their journey of recovery.
You can also view or download our Christmas news 2024 as a pdf
We have continue to adopt a hybrid approach to our work this year. We offered our Counselling and Workshops online. For our Ten Women Survivors Group Psycho-Educational Course we offered this as a hybrid group for 3 sessions face to face and seven session online via Zoom. This enabled the women increased accessibility and enabled us to reach women with long term health issues and women who had small children who would not have been able to attend the course otherwise.
Some feedback from our Spring 2024
Course includes:
“Amazing course, really changed how I felt about myself and allowed me to understand why I thought and acted like I did. …This course helped relieve a lot of shame by admiring all the other women and therefore finally being able to admire myself.”
We were also able to offer some subsidised one to one counselling thanks to the Fundraising Marathon of Nicky and Sadie.We received very positive feedback from our clients including:
“Thanks so much to Sadie (my Counsellor) she truly exudes such light, empathy, humour, and kindness in every interaction we had, and I felt blessed, supported, understood, and held.”
This year we have received over 500 emails for support signposting and information from: Survivors, Partners, Social Workers, Counselling and Mental Health Professionals.
We respond to these emails offering our services where appropriate and also with information resources and signposting.
“I felt like I took the first step out of my self imposed isolation. Thank you to the team for being non judgmental, compassionate and caring” “Workshop Attendee”
April 2024
Online Workshops
Our November online workshop Facilitators: Leasa, Rebecca, Kasia, Suzette, Sophie, Rachel and Cheryl.
This year we continued to offer our workshops online. We had 35 attendees in April and 37 in November. We had some encouraging feedback from our workshops this year including:
“Inspirationally helpful… a fantastic presentation on the vast array of approaches and resources, delivered so well in a 3 hour workshop, and the handout is excellent.”
also
“A really great experience to do as a couple – it has helped both of us to increase understanding and how to move forward. It has created conversation between us already.”
The Survivors Trust
We are also proud to be Full Members of The Survivors Trust http://www.thesurvivorstrust.org the National Umbrella organisation that represents Survivors at Government Level. We have taken an active part in their meetings both in London and nationally through out the year; contributing to support other services with information and resources where we can especially in the London area.
Funding and Fundraisers
We are so so grateful to all of our Donors some who are regular givers to Into The Light. Our work would not be possible without your support – we so appreciate you. This year Alex Blake (a colleague of CIC Director Nicky Pallis) and his partner Gloria ran the Brighton Marathon for us in April and raised £2105!! Sasha another of our supporters ran the Dingle Marathon in Ireland raising over £700 for us.
Thank you to Sasha, Gloria and Alex they all hit and over reached their target. We are so grateful to them for putting in all the hard work, grit and training through rain and shine and completing their runs. Renee also raised money for us in a very creative way. We are also so grateful to Maggie and Roger Ellis for their very generous donation to our work this year.
A massive thank you to everyone who supported us in whatever way you did – we would not have got through this year without you. We are also very grateful to have received funding including from Bentley, Schreier Foundation, Awards For All, Heathrow Community Trust, Pathways in Ealing and City Bridge Trust Funding and Shanly Foundation. We are so so grateful to all these funders and donations – without them we would not be able to function.
Much of this funding went towards our Women’s Survivors Group Psycho-Educational Courses, Workshops and one to one counselling. We are so grateful for the help of our amazing Fundraiser Jemina Talja who has worked so hard to get these funding bids for us.
If you would like to donate to our work please send us an email and we can give you more information at info@intothelight.org.uk.
Or see our donations page on the website where there is a really easy way to give through a click of the Give A Little button.
Please also support us by using your Co-op points for Into The Light – our cause number is 93395 here is the link:
It doesn’t cost you a penny and you can be anywhere in the UK.
Fundraising Challenge!!
Also, please can we ask you to consider doing a FUNDRAISING CHALLENGE 2025 for us! Any funds you raise would be so welcome and help us to support Survivors in their recovery from sexual abuse. You don’t have to run a marathon (although that’s great too) but past fundraisers have had cake bake sales and wine tasting evenings!!
We would really like to thank Jemina Talja our amazing fundraiser, John Williamson for his great work on the website and publicity, Brenda Dickens for her super accurate and super patient Finance and Accounting Assistance. We would also like to thank Phil, Vikki, Lisa and Faye and all at Survivors Trust, Alison at CCI Accountants and Maureen and Sam at St Andrews our venue for groups. We would especially like to thank all our facilitators for the workshops and groups this year including Suzette, Sophie, Cheryl, Rachel, Kasia, and of course all our attendees and clients who have joined us for our Into The Light workshops, courses and seminars and counselling – it really has been our privilege to meet and get to know you.
Also, if you don’t want to hear from us in the future – that is absolutely fine just send us an email and we will remove you from our email list.
Have as good a Christmas as you possibly can, Happy New Year and hopefully see you either face to face or via Zoom in 2025.
Best wishes,
Rebecca, Sadie, Nicky, Pritti, Leasa
Into The Light Directors
Address: Into The Light, PO Box 64427 London W5 9HA
Email: info@intothelight.org.uk
Giving Information ~ Breaking Isolation ~ Sharing Experience
