We’re winners of the prestigious Stephen Lloyd Award
We are delighted to announce we have won the Stephen Lloyd Award in recognition of creating the first holistic pop-up support and wellness hubs for women and girls to support ending Gender-Based Violence. The Stephen Lloyd Award recognises social entrepreneurs and their unique innovations.
Stephen Lloyd and the award
“Stephen Lloyd [left] was an inspirational lawyer and innovator who dedicated his working life to advising charities and social enterprises and who pioneered significant developments in the sector…Stephen was widely known for his expertise, dynamism, creative intellect, wisdom, leadership, sense of fun and commitment to good causes, and his friends and admirers have established the Stephen Lloyd Awards to preserve and perpetuate the memory, ideals and legacy of such an extraordinary man… As well as developing his own social innovations, Stephen was an admirer and supporter of other social innovators and throughout his career at Bates Wells LLP always had at least one project on the go, where he gave legal support to getting someone else’s project off the ground because he believed in its potential.” (Stephen Lloyd Awards, 2020)
Bates Wells Foundation manages the award with many supporters, in honouring change-makers, Stephen’s legacy is honoured. We are honoured to receive this incredible recognition within the first year of launching our innovative model. It was only last year around this time when our CEO, Sema Gornall, had the idea of creating holistic pop-up hubs; a sustainable model to end Gender-Based Violence for good.
Our history
Since being founded in 2014, by filmmaker Mabel Evans and survivor of FGM/C Hoda Ali, our intent has been to make the unspoken issues women and girls are facing mainstream. With this approach, so many innovations came from The Vavengers. Initially an artist collective, the original Vavengers found themselves having to become a registered organisation because not enough attention was being given to Violence Against Women and Girls.
The UK’s first FGM/C billboard by The Vavengers
In the years before becoming a registered organisation, The Vavengers organised events to raise funds for grassroots organisations and awareness for the need to end FGM/C. We launched the UK’s first FGM/C billboard with our first fundraising campaign as activists. In funding many grassroots organisations, we found that for many speakers and activists, this was the first time they had been paid, even though they had been delivering important front-line services for many years. The Vavengers have always recognised the need for creating lasting and sustainable change by challenging the results of our patriarchal society.
By 2021, after only 2 years of being a registered organisation, we had been awarded a grant by the Home Office to support our important work. Mostly with the efforts of volunteers and the founding team members, we built the Reaching Out to Your Community project with KDLK; a grassroots survivor-led organisation, whose programme supported hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers in South London. With this programme, we knew there was an appetite for more safe community spaces. In the same year (2021), we secured our first multi-year core-cost grant which enabled us to build a structure to our team. As a result, our Co-founders moved to the board after many years of passionate service and we were able to hire our first paid staff members part-time: CEO, Head of Programming, CFO, Art Director and Marketing Manager.
The Vavengers support hubs
Our first pop-up support hub, 2022
“Sema dreamt of combining all support lines available for women and girls, offering these services in a safe space and embedding wellness into their lives. ”
With the power of volunteering, a team of innovators and an impressive board with multi-agency skills, we were able to build our CEO’s ingenious brainchild: The Vavengers Pop-up Support & Wellness Hub for Women and Girls™.
Sema grew up as one of four sisters in a house that never felt safe. She had to witness her mother not have any choices as a woman. Sema’s mother was “sold” as a modern slave aged 3 and later on forced into a marriage when she was still a child in her teenage years. Sema grew up in a house where she never experienced fatherly love because of her gender, and saw how everything was unjust for her mother. Sema, her sisters and her mother were subjected to multiple forms of abuse spanning years. Sema always questioned why there was no safe space for people like her could seek justice and support in order to build themselves a happy and safe life. Having first-hand experience with GBV, Sema dreamt of combining all support lines available for women and girls and offering these services in a safe space while embedding wellness into the lives of women and girls.
It feels like only yesterday when The Vavengers team members were devising how to make something groundbreaking in the gender space, with only limited funding and all part-time staff. Soon enough, we found ourselves building yet another first-of-its-kind programme, forming partnerships with dozens of grassroots and pro-bono organisations to create these safe spaces. We pitched the idea to Two Magpies Fund who did not hesitate to invest in our unique model. Our existing partners: Choose Love, SafeLives, and London Catalyst soon followed suit, joining TMF as funders. Before we went live with the idea, we placed our attention on building strong governance and safeguarding. We partnered with Thomson Reuters Foundation, enabling us to secure pro-bono legal aid that would have otherwise cost six-figure sums.
As our Head of Programming & Development, Dominica’s biggest strength lies with building partnerships. She was quick to secure us with important and sector-leading supplier partners such as Bloody Good Period and The Felix Project which ensured we could do this work without six-figure donations. Along the way, we also introduced all our partners to other grassroots organisations, helping to reduce their running costs meaning that they could focus on delivering the important work rather than worrying about month-to-month supply grants. We now have 100+ referral partners including healthcare, non-profit and government services and we host dozens of grassroots Founders and survivor activists at our hubs to help deliver our new model. Only with the power of strong background work, ethical marketing, and building partnerships, were we able to make a big entrance with this idea and accommodate the most “unseen” and vulnerable members of the public. Whilst preparing to launch our hubs, we also renewed our digital presence with a brand refresh, making ourselves accessible to all kinds of users. Read more here.
The official launch of our idea took place in April, and in June we hosted our first pop-up in Waltham Forest, London. As we moved around London, we were quick to discover that women and girls we supported faced between 3 to 6 forms of GBV at the same time, of whom hadn’t received support from elsewhere and found many support models complicated or inaccessible. After attending a single workshop, over 96% of women and girls we have supported instantly felt more confident to talk about the issues they were facing. They felt safe with our approach and found hope that they too could live a life free from abuse. The wellness methods we are introducing to women and girls have been the key factor in their speaking up since instability and feeling unsafe kept the women and girls we support silenced for a long time.
The future
“We can only end FGM/C and all other forms of Gender-Based Violence with a holistic support approach. It’s not fair to talk about any form of violence without considering pressing factors that leave women and girls without a choice. This is why we call our support model the recipe to end Gender-Based Violence. It’s an exciting moment in the gender space as we believe that with this proven method, we can build a just society. The Stephen Lloyd Award has given us the recognition we deserve to make that happen. We will continue to focus on upscaling and building more long-term partnerships with wonderful organisations until this model is available globally.”
The Stephen Lloyd Award will also give us access to industry-leading pro-bono partners to help us deliver our strategic plan, and £25,000 to upscale our proven model. We are excited for what the future holds for The Vavengers and the wider network who work tirelessly to end GBV. Recognitions like these enable change-makers to move forward with increased support and this award is a key which will help us unlock endless opportunities.
The Vavengers is a powerhouse team made up of cross-sector experts including artists, filmmakers, writers, academics, legal professionals, and wellness practitioners. Our strength has always been connecting everyone to end Violence Against Women and Girls together. We are proud to be recognised in such a special way.
Credit
Author: Sema Gornall
Editor: Ellie Melvin
Works Cited
Stephen Lloyd Awards, About, 2020 https://www.stephenlloydawards.org/about/