Webinar: Building Digital Healing Spaces for Survivors of Sexual Harm

Healing from sexual harm doesn't end when a crisis does, and not every survivor wants or can reach in-person services. In this webinar for the Nursing Network on Violence Against Women International (NNVAWI), Our Wave's Dr. Laura Sinko, Brendan Michaelsen, and Kyle Linton give a live tour of the Our Wave community. They explain the design decisions behind each feature and share how anonymous, survivor-shared data can open new doors for research.

Why a Digital Healing Space

Our Wave began with a simple idea: survivors deserve a safe, anonymous place to tell their stories. Disclosure is often a first step toward healing, and it can lead to resources and to community. A free, always-available online space reaches survivors who aren't ready for in-person care, or who are looking for support long after the crisis has passed. It is designed to complement crisis centers and clinicians, not replace them. Because trauma can make it hard to focus, the team keeps stories, answers, and resources together in one place.

A Tour of the Community

• Gentle onboarding. First-time visitors choose where to begin: a grounding exercise, survivor stories, expert answers, or resources. Grounding is available from every page.

• Stories and support. Survivors share narratives and artwork, including poems and paintings, alongside Messages of Hope and Healing. Readers can react, send thanks, and leave moderated comments, and can filter by format or by tags survivors choose themselves.

• Survivor Q&A. Survivors ask anonymous questions, which are answered by credentialed experts using clinical guidelines. Each answer shows who wrote it and links to related questions.

• Resource library. National hotlines sit alongside state-specific, youth, and international resources. The long-term goal is to surface the right resource for each survivor's needs.

Sharing a Story Safely

The sharing flow starts with grounding and a clear explanation of how stories are reviewed. Survivors write their story and can add optional pieces: what healing means to them, a Message of Hope for another survivor, a title, and self-identification tags with plain-language definitions. Sharing requires an email address, which is never published and is stored encrypted. Our Wave uses it to send resources right away and when the story is approved. Survivors in an unsafe situation can opt out of those emails. They also choose whether their story can support advocacy and research.

Every story and comment is reviewed by the Our Wave team. Reviewers remove identifying details, add Community notes where needed, and keep out victim-blaming and hate speech. Survivors can come back and update their story at any time.

Research Built on Consent

For researchers, Our Wave plays two roles: a place to translate research into plain language, and an anonymous, survivor-consented data source. Because survivors share without giving their names, the platform reaches people who would never join a university study. These are often hidden populations whose experiences rarely appear in research. Researchers work only with stories whose authors opted in, as an added safeguard. Available data includes stories and tags, Messages of Hope and Healing, survivor questions, and anonymized patterns in how people use resources.

The team also builds branded versions of the platform for partner organizations. This lets partners serve their own communities while contributing to a shared understanding of survivors' needs.

Shaped by Survivors

Feedback flows in two ways. Everyday signals come from anonymous navigation data and built-in surveys. Formal guidance comes from a paid Survivor Advisory Board that reviews demos and both the technical and research roadmaps. Paying advisors for their expertise is a core principle.

Safety and Moderation

In the Q&A, the team discusses how the platform guards against misuse:

• A thoughtful, multi-step sharing flow filters out most spam.

• Human review applies the community guidelines to every submission.

• There is no private messaging, which removes an easy path for harassment.

Moderation has meant far less trolling than the team first expected. They also discuss serving survivors in lower-resource countries, which depends on deep local partnerships for adapting and translating materials.

Partner With Our Wave

Researchers, clinicians, and organizations can collaborate on research, build a partner community, or simply add Our Wave to their resource lists. Learn about partnering with Our Wave.

Key Moments

• 4:15 Why Our Wave began, and why online

• 9:42 Demo: onboarding and the community feed

• 18:33 Demo: how survivors share a story

• 23:17 Demo: Survivor Q&A

• 26:44 Demo: the resource library

• 28:07 Research with Our Wave

• 31:05 Partner communities

• 35:19 The Survivor Advisory Board

• 47:34 Q&A: moderation and misuse

• 51:27 Q&A: research consent

• 56:58 Q&A: reaching lower-resource countries