Each year, an average of 200,000 women are victims of physical and/or sexual violence. 1 in 3 women are subjected to acts of violence across their lifetime.
In light of these alarming figures, health professionals, social workers, and other specialists play a major role in caring for victims of violence. Indeed :
- Violence against women has consequences on their mental, reproductive, and physical health, as well as on their children.
- It generates high socio-economic costs in terms of healthcare, productivity loss, and measures to suppress violence.
Generally speaking, these women receive inadequate or poorly-adapted care. The recommendations are clear: women must receive adapted comprehensive care (medical, psychological, social, and legal) as early as possible and in the proper setting.
The Fight for Dignity Method
With this in mind, Laurence Fischer has developed an adapted karate method to support women who have experienced violence. The aim is to help women regain awareness of their bodies and reconnect with their inner selves, all the while restoring their self-esteem and self-confidence. However, it is not a self-defense workshop.
The Fight for Dignity karate workshop is fully incorporated into the care pathways provided by medical facilities for women who have experienced violence. Sessions are taught by state-certified instructors who’ve received training by our teams, not only in our teaching methods, but also in the various post-traumatic stress disorders that may afflict the women benefiting from these sessions.
After it was first put into practice at the Maison Dorcas –founded by Dr. Denis Mukwege’s Panzi Foundation in Bukavu (DRC)– this method, which combines warm-up exercises and games, karate techniques and moves, and relaxation, was replicated in France in 2018. In the six years following the first workshops at the Maison des Femmes (women’s center) in Saint-Denis (93), it was joined by 14 other facilities, all of which are integrated into medicalized structures that implement a holistic approach to ensure the beneficiaries are always referred by its medical staff.