Giving Compass' Take:

• Understanding trauma survivors' stories and genuinely listening means prioritizing them as individuals and experts, rather than tokenizing them for their experiences. Additionally, diverse voices should be incorporated to understand the broader narrative of an issues surrounding healing and trauma. 

• How can donors encourage diversity in the leadership of organizations that are addressing trauma and work with survivors?

• Read why inclusion is key for equitable systems change. 

Working for a service organization, we know the importance of listening to our clients. But what about our colleagues?

I work for Polaris, where one of our primary programs is operating the National Human Trafficking Hotline (among other work we do in the field such as policy advocacy). I started out answering phones on the hotline before moving into several positions that gave me experience training diverse audiences, advising stakeholders as they developed anti-trafficking response systems, and eventually moving into managing the entire hotline program. By this time, I had a unique skill set and robust expertise – the kind that only comes from extensive experience in a field. Then I came out. As a survivor of commercial sexual exploitation.

Suddenly, rather than wanting to hear my expertise people told me “we just want you to tell your story.” When I was finally about to be true to my life’s experience, I was suddenly not treated as an equal.

I’ve done a lot of work trying to piece together how I became to be seen as a story, and not as a person. It manifests in terms of exclusion and othering, tokenism, tied to notions around trauma and the need to be rescued: “you are too traumatized to do this work.”

We need to engage survivors in the field. This field is not immune to these dynamics. All of these things – race, culture, institutions of oppression – they don’t disappear within the field. We need to make conscious efforts to decolonize within our sector.

It really starts with listening to survivors and bringing voices in and making opportunities diverse. I am advocating for two things. First, understanding survivors have more to offer than their stories. And second, as a consequence, create paid opportunities for that to happen, and to break the barriers down.

Read the full article about tokenizing trauma by Lara at FeedbackLabs.