Our Wave

The mission of Our Wave is to 1) Amplify sexual violence survivor voices who are not typically heard through mainstream media, 2) Foster connections between survivors to build hope that healing is possible with time, 3) Educate society on the scope and impact of sexual violence through story sharing and analysis of survivor narratives, and 4) Mobilize our communities to create evidence-based strategies for prevention and survivor support in order to create a wave of change.

Our Wave is an anonymous story sharing and data gathering platform for survivors of sexual violence aimed to build a community of hope and healing online. We built this platform in response to survivors' desires to anonymously reflect and connect with others who have undergone similar experiences. Through our platform, we hope to provide survivors with hope and healing to move past the most traumatic experiences of their lives.

We aim to connect with survivors through the following channels:
-Establish partnerships with national rape crisis centers and state coalitions.
-Connect with online survivor communities (Reddit, FB Groups, etc.)
-Digitally through Google Ads.
-Partnerships with corporate partners and universities.

We are an organization of passionate operations, technology, design, research, and survivor advocate volunteers. Since our launch in September 2019, we have solidified a team of 10 founding members who meet weekly. Our team has a diverse representation of product specialists who have extensive experience building and scaling technology companies. To learn more about our team please check out the about us section of our website to view specific bios. Alongside our team, we have formally established a non-profit board with some of the biggest names in the sexual violence prevention space. We would encourage you to view our team/board member page to see their bios and experience. https://www.ourwave.org/who-we-are

Since we were founded in July 2019 Our Wave accomplished the following:

Structuring
In 2019 Our Wave filed as a non-profit and obtained 501(c)(3) status in record time thanks to our lawyers at Wyrick Robbins.

Technology
In 2019 our team completed the entire design, development, and rollout of our web/mobile-responsive anonymous social media platform. We cannot express how large of an achievement this is in such a short period of time with no funding. This immense dedication to building the best possible product to support survivors is one of our proudest achievements.

Staff
Our team grew to 10 dedicated members. Our diverse team is comprised of engineers, designers, academics, healthcare professionals, and business/operations specialists.

Establishing Our Board
In 2019 we created our board of directors to support our governance and decision making. We are lucky to have Suzanne Brown-McBride, Samira Rajabi, Christopher Poe, and Kate Smith as our first 4 external board members alongside Kyle Linton and Brendan Michaelsen. We hope to increase the size of our board and advisory council in 2020.

Donations
In 2019 we received $5,000 in private donations and over $20,000 of in-kind donations. We have been humbled by the generosity of our donors who have shared their funds and, more importantly, their time.

Building Our Network
In 2019 we held over 100 meetings with Sexual Violence prevention partners, advocates, advisors, and specialists. One direct example of this was attending our first SART (Sexual Assault Resource Team) meeting. Through both local and national connections, our meetings in 2019 set an amazing foundation for our work to move forward into 2020 and beyond.

Conference Attendance
Several of our Team Members attended the National Sexual Assault Conference (NSAC) in Philadelphia this past August. We received an immense amount of feedback and support from advocates across the United States. We are actively outlining our conference attendance plans for 2020.

Press
2019 also brought us our first taste of press. We were featured in the NCSU Technician, QNotes, and on CBS.

Traction
In November we launched a grassroots campaign on Reddit to share the Our Wave platform with various subreddits. Through this outreach, we received several Reddit awards, hundreds of upvotes, and became the top post on 3 different survivor support subreddits. During the period that we launched this campaign, we also received thousands of site views, hundreds of site interactions, and over 10 submitted stories.

Stories
By far the most exciting part of our 2019 was launching the platform for survivors. The site officially launched in September and since then, we have received 50 stories and our site has over 4,500 views from survivors.