Lessons from a peer learning workshop with Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Sexual Abuse (CPTCSA), Philippines and Praajak, India show that a safe space for survivors of sexual violence cannot be assumed. It has to be built deliberately, over time, and extended to the facilitators running the work as much as to the participants in it.
Family for Every Child recently hosted a peer learning workshop on trauma-informed facilitation for groups of survivors of sexual violence taking part in support or advocacy programmes. CPTCSA and Praajak shared their experiences and insights from their work with boys and men, going into detail about what worked, what didn't, and what they would do differently. What follows draws directly on what they said.
Sexual violence against boys and men is among the least visible forms of abuse that child protection and social work organisations confront. Stigma keeps most survivors silent; the few who do disclose often find that the systems meant to support them, such as healthcare, legal or justice systems, were not built with their wellbeing in mind. Two organisations have spent recent years trying to change this from the inside, by building groups where survivors themselves set the terms of their own engagement, advocacy, and healing.
CPTCSA piloted a survivor-informed safeguarding approach, developed by Children Unite, for participatory advocacy work with six young men, drawn from residential care and community settings. Praajak took a different route entirely: slowly building two ongoing survivor groups from a research study that explored why adult male survivors don’t disclose their experiences.
Grounding the engagement with survivors in a trauma-informed approach
At its core, being trauma-informed means recognising that experiences of violence, abuse, and other forms of harm can continue to shape how people feel, relate to others, and engage long after the trauma was experienced. Trauma-informed practice is not about eliminating difficult emotions or preventing discomfort. It is about recognising the impact of trauma, reducing the risk of causing further harm, and creating conditions where people have choice, control, and support. It also means recognising survivors as experts in their own experiences while acknowledging that each survivor's needs, readiness and preferred ways of engaging may differ.
This is why participants challenged the idea that a group can simply be declared a "safe space". When working with those who have experienced trauma, difficult emotions or triggers are often unavoidable. The goal is not to create a space free from all discomfort , but one that is safe enough: a space where trust is built over time, people remain in control of their engagement n, and support is available when needed.
Panelists and participants of the workshop identified three interconnected elements that contribute towards safety: being trauma-informed, being risk-informed, and treating consent as an ongoing process rather than a one-time agreement.
Their experiences offer eight lessons for organisations seeking to build safe spaces.
1. Readiness is not only individual. It is also collective and dynamic
In this context, readiness means whether a participant can safely take part in the group activity and advocacy work. This covers emotional readiness, relational or group readiness, and practical readiness. The panelists emphasised that readiness does not remain constant. It is dynamic and can change from one day to the next depending on multiple factors.
CPTCSA had screened all six pilot participants individually, and social workers had vouched for each of them. What the team hadn’t accounted for was the group itself. Four of the six already knew each other, having come from the same residential shelter. The other two were meeting everyone for the first time and, at points, seemed unclear about the purpose of the exercise altogether.
The team’s advice, looking back, is to treat trust-building, identity formation, and group cohesion as steps that have to happen before any advocacy activity, not alongside it. Praajak’s experience points the same way from a different angle: their induction process for new members now deliberately maps each person’s strengths, availability, and comfort level, and prioritises relationship-building over any advocacy output in the early stages. Both panelists stressed that readiness has to be checked on throughout a project, not assumed at the outset, and that facilitation should adapt accordingly.
One of CPTCSA's strongest reflections was that the quality of relationships mattered more than following the original facilitation plan. Activities were adapted as trust developed and participants' needs changed.
2. Consent can be withdrawn at any time
During orientation, CPTCSA used an unusual prop: a paper shredder. Participants were shown, physically, that their consent to participate could be withdrawn at any point in a session without any negative consequences - this was symbolised through the use of the shredder which would destroy the consent form if participants chose to leave. Two participants did withdraw over the course of the pilot, one on the first day, one during the final session. Facilitators didn’t chase either of them for an explanation and this, in CPTCSA’s own framing, wasn’t a failure of the activity - it was the safeguarding process working exactly as intended.
Facilitators should build in regular moments to revisit consent throughout the process, not just at the start of the programme or group formation.
3. Plan and prepare for risk management with the facilitation team
Prepare for risk together as a facilitation team. This includes anticipating what might cause distress, agreeing in advance how to respond if it happens, and revisiting these plans regularly rather than treating risk management as a one-off exercise completed before a project starts.
CPTCSA built this into a safeguarding response loop that ran through the whole pilot: observe → contain → co-design → stabilise → resume. When something went wrong in a session, for example when participants showed distress, withdrew from activities or when conflict arose in the group, the response wasn't improvised. It followed a process the team had agreed on in advance.
Praajak applied a similar principle through regular well-being check-ins built into every meeting, a standing practice for catching emerging risks early rather than waiting for a crisis to surface them.
4. Centre participants’ agency and choice
During CPTCSA’s pilot, one participant grew visibly uncomfortable when a discussion touched on homosexuality, and pulled back from engaging further. Facilitators didn’t pressurise him to explain himself. Instead they acknowledged the moment without singling him out, treated it as something the whole group could learn from, and offered alternative, non-verbal ways for him to participate, drawing or writing, rather than insisting he speak.
CPTCSA's facilitators worked from a simple set of do’s and don’ts for moments like this that centre participants’ agency as a key principle. DO: acknowledge emotions without singling anyone out, offer alternative ways to take part such as drawing or writing, and normalise a wide range of reactions.
DON’T: never pressurise someone to share more than they have chosen to.
Praajak built the same principle into the structure of their groups from the outset. Rather than assigning roles, they let members decide for themselves how to contribute: some chose to speak publicly, others worked behind the scenes on documentation, research, or planning. The organisation’s view is that this flexibility, not a fixed template, is what allowed people to stay involved on their own terms.
Praajak’s broader recommendation is to treat survivors as partners rather than beneficiaries as early as possible. The organisation found that this single shift, from people being helped to people helping shape the process, significantly increased participation, and eventually allowed members to present findings and recommendations directly to government stakeholders.
5. Facilitators need well-planned support
Zeny Rosales, Executive Director of CPTCSA, raised a learning that complicates a common assumption: that lived experience is what makes someone a safe and effective facilitator. Lived experience is a genuine strength. It helps survivor-facilitators build trust with participants quickly. That same lived experience also means they remain exposed to the same triggers as the people they are supporting, and in practice. Facilitators who do not have lived experience may experience secondary trauma. In both cases facilitators need support to continue to facilitate effectively.
CPTCSA ran their pilot with three co-facilitators rather than one lead, specifically so that no single person was carrying a session alone. They recommend building co-facilitation, regular debriefing, and access to clinical or professional supervision into the design of the work, rather than treating facilitator support as an afterthought.
6. Don’t assume any particular gender of facilitator works best
Praajak shared an account during breakout discussion that complicates any tidy rule about facilitator gender. The issue wasn't which gender connects better with survivors, accounts varied across organisations on that question, but whether the reasoning behind choosing a facilitator was explained to the group before asking for their consent, and whether the group had a genuine say in who facilitates rather than the decision being made for them in advance.
7. Expect masculinity to shape disclosure and patterns of engagement
Praajak’s work surfaced a barrier specific to working with male survivors: many participants had grown up with the belief that boys and men cannot be victims, and that they are expected to be strong regardless. This delayed disclosure (of sexual abuse) for many of them, and discouraged some from seeking help in the first place. The organisation’s advice is not to mistake early silence for disengagement. For many of the men in Praajak’s groups, willingness to speak came much later than willingness to simply stay in the room.
8. Build in more time than feels necessary
Praajak's work took shape over a much longer period, as part of an ongoing programme rather than a single activity, which gave the group time to build trust among themselves before moving toward advocacy. They faced logistical challenges to sustain engagement with members holding a wide range of jobs, from teachers to businessmen to students, finding a shared meeting time was a constant source of delay. Mixing online and in-person formats helped, though it didn't solve the problem entirely. CPTCSA's pilot, by contrast, ran for just two days. In hindsight, the team felt that the time wasn't enough to build trust, and it left participants still processing their own experiences rather than functioning as a group.
What CPTCSA and Praajak arrived at, from different starting points, was a shared understanding that safety cannot be rushed. Trust has to be built over time, participation must remain voluntary, and survivors need meaningful control over how they engage.
Their experiences reinforce a simple but important lesson: trauma-informed practice is not a checklist. It is a way of working that places relationships, trust, choice, engagement, and safeguarding at the centre of survivor engagement.
Safe spaces are not declared. They are built, together, over time through trust, choice, relationships and ongoing attention to safeguarding.
Support the practitioners doing this work.
CPTCSA in the Philippines and Praajak in India are leading change from within their own communities, drawing on lived experience and deep local knowledge to support survivors of sexual violence and build safer spaces for participation and advocacy.
Family for Every Child connects and amplifies this expertise across borders, turning local solutions into shared learning and global influence, so that a safeguarding lesson from a pilot in the Philippines strengthens practice in India, and what survivors in both countries are teaching us reaches the rooms where global child protection policy is made.
Your donation supports the relationships, peer learning, and knowledge exchange that help locally led organisations shape the future of children's rights worldwide.
Click here to donate to Family for Every Child
Click here to contact and donate to Praajak India
Click here to contact and donate to CPTCSA, Philippines