In South Africa hundreds of community members come forward every month to volunteer at their local police stations, courts and health facilities to help victims of all violent crimes, not just rape. When these volunteers come together Rape Crisis is there to lobby on their behalf, to offer training and to assist them with networking and the pooling of resources and sharing of ideas. We train them together as a group and we train individual stations and Community Policing Forums. Our special focus is on rape and gender violence. We work in partnership with five other organisations: NICRO, Business Against Crime, The Trauma Centre for Victims of Violence, RAPCAN and Mosaic under the auspices of the Western Cape Network on Violence against Women. We call ourselves the Trauma Rooms Focus Group and are founder members of a government civil society working group called the Provincial Victim Support Working Group together with the SAPS and the Department of Community Safety.
