The theme for Black History Month 2024 is ‘Reclaiming Narratives’ – a matter of vital importance when it comes to the intersecting issues of racial discrimination and domestic abuse. Throughout the month, we’re pleased to be celebrating and spotlighting the transformative work of changemakers from Black, African, Caribbean and Mixed Heritage communities within the domestic abuse sector.
This week, we had the opportunity to speak to Annie Gibbs – a social entrepreneur, activist, VAWG campaigner and SafeLives Pioneer, who founded the UK based by-and-for organisation, Amour Destiné. Amour Destiné was formed after Annie’s passion was ignited when she lost her mother at the age of eight, and the experience of learning to push past her own challenges growing up in the UK care system. Annie has over 20 years’ experience delivering events, training, public speaking, and communications within both the charity and corporate sectors. She is a member of Article 39 Steering Group, co-author of Free Loaves on Fridays, and was recognised as a positive role model finalist at the 2021 National Diversity Awards in the category of gender and in the King Charles III Coronation Champion Award in 2023 for her work in the domestic abuse sector.
In the following interview, we hear from Annie about the importance of reclaiming narratives across the domestic abuse sector and wider systems, and breaking down systemic barriers to funding and resources for the vital work of specialist by-and-for organisations.
The theme for Black History Month this year is ‘Reclaiming Narratives’. What does this mean to you?
For me, it means reclaiming the narrative that Black, care-experienced survivors can connect with their culture and heritage to restore the identity they lost whilst growing up in the care system. For all voices to be heard, we need to see systems change that includes everyone – not just the same voices being heard because they are considered more valuable. It means truly balancing and adding value so that no one is left behind. I want to see and experience change, not just as someone who runs my own organisation, but also as a survivor. I don’t want us to still be having the same conversation in 10 or 20-years’ time.
Funding for grassroots organisations is essential to enabling this change and ensuring that everyone’s voice is heard, but a big part of this also needs to be in how we refer to and identify people, and recognise both their voices and who they are. We’re still not truly seeing and recognising everyone – we’re seeing the ‘majority’ and the ‘minority’, which is not acceptable, and only reinforces ongoing systemic barriers. The evidence on this is already there – Dr. Olumide Adisa has done brilliant work exploring the issues and barriers in the language that’s used, specifically across the domestic abuse sector, and we need to see change both across and beyond the domestic abuse sector for everyone’s voice to be recognised and heard. Unless these barriers come down, we're going to keep seeing the same inequality across systems – particularly within access to funding, resources, and spaces. I really want to see change that ensures that ‘reclaiming the narrative’ is actually embedded across systems.
Can you tell us a little bit about your role within the domestic abuse sector?
I founded Amour Destiné to create a support service and make a difference in the lives of women born of African and Caribbean heritage to break through the barriers that they face; which has been driven through my own personal experiences growing up in the UK care system, and a desire to build on my late mother’s legacy. The Amour Destiné platform equips and empowers women with the services and tools for them to succeed and overcome the obstacles that life throws at them. Since its launch, Amour Destiné has evolved from networking events, to providing mentoring workshops, counselling and Advocacy support services.
Being someone who has knocked on doors in local areas to try and change the visibility of grassroots, Black-led organisations has helped towards reaching a place where they can actually be seen and recognised, but we are still not where we need to be. It took a Black woman to see me to be able to start that, which is also something that needs to change. We need everybody within the sector to be invested in making everybody's voices truly valued so that we can all be contributing to change that reaches people that are not being seen. Fortunately, I've been able to create a platform where my voice is starting to be heard, and it’s important to me to be able to use that platform to bring others forward too. We need less gatekeeping in the sector, especially around funding.
I’m also a SafeLives Pioneer. At SafeLives, I have been able to raise awareness and educate the organisation about the unique experiences of care-experienced people so that they have a better understanding of what improvements are needed. This has seen the organisation reviewing its questions in research forms and in practice locations to ensure they are asking survivors if they are care-experienced. This one simple question has added to the evidence-base to show that the highest number of domestic abuse victim-survivors have been affected by care, showing that there is something wrong with the system.
I’m also an activist and VAWG campaigner. I was involved in the Home Office’s Enough campaign during 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, in which I shared my lived experience to highlight just how important bystander intervention is. I’m also proud to have worked closely with Jebina Yasmin Islam, the sister of Sabina Nessa, to work towards changing sentencing requirements after her sister's murderer was able to decline attending court and facing the family. We worked together to launch a campaign for Sabina's Law, with valuable advice and support from Suzanne Jacob, then CEO of SafeLives, in the early stages of campaigning, and were able to gain support from the London Victims Commissioner's Office. We went on to work with other bereaved families who'd also been impacted by this issue, and together we were able to see legislative change in the Criminal Justice Bill; which would give Judges power to force perpetrators to attend sentencing. This was interrupted by the change in government and the focus on the Victims and Prisoners Act, but the new government has committed to honouring that promise to the families. I’m really glad to have been part of fighting and campaigning for the voices of Sabina and her family to be heard.
In the Respect Manifesto, we have detailed some key asks to help us work towards stopping harm, one of which is “fund specialist service provision in every local area.” Please could you tell us about your experiences with funding in the domestic abuse sector, and the role that you have played as a change-maker in this area?
My experience with funding has been extremely challenging. Being the Founder and CEO of a specialist by-and-for organisation, I have had to fight to be seen and for our community of women to access the resources they need. Many opportunities for funding are missed because capacity issues mean we simply don’t have time to complete applications. I'm seeing organisations having to pivot away from their vital work supporting survivors just so that they can apply for small amounts of project funding, and even when they do secure funding, they then have to spend so much time and capacity completing reporting. We urgently need sustainable funding so that we can break out of the cycle of short-term grants that barely scratch the surface of what is needed, alongside new models of applications and reporting that are more realistic for grassroots organisations.
I also find the criteria for many opportunities discriminatory, as they do not account for the specialist responses to harm of grassroots organisations. We do so much in comparison to some of the larger, national services – which isn’t to say that they don’t do great work, because they do - but grassroots organisations don’t have the teams and systems in place to carry out the infrastructure work needed to fulfil funding criteria. As a Founder and CEO, I often have to also be the communications expert, service-user advocate, administrator, and so on. When we are approached by Commissioners, I spend so much time preparing a proposal for small amounts of project funding that I often find myself working for free. Thankfully, we’ve been fortunate to obtain support, which has enabled us to continue to grow our workforce this last year.
Our organisation is a also recipient of The Circle Fund, which has been a very positive process in terms of application. It wasn’t complicated at all and there were very few barriers. They asked simple, clear questions, making it an easy process to apply. The only difficulty was in the monitoring, because every time you receive a grant you have to fill out an online form, but we fed this back and they listened and responded to make it easier. That funding has helped some of our women in terms of building their resilience, because the fund is not just for fleeing but helping to increase their safety. For example, we've helped women with things like driving lessons and buying a car so that they can safely get to programmes which were otherwise inaccessible because of the anxiety around being alone on public transport. It’s also helped with food vouchers and other essentials.
There is still a long way to go for both our organisation and all specialist by-and-for services in terms of sustainable funding. The funding situation across our services has been made worse by the impact of the cost-of-living crisis, particularly for young girls who may be gang affiliated, in exploitative situations, or having to rely on dangerous perpetrators for support. We've also seen an increase in deprivation in the women that we're supporting, and the time that it takes to support them and address those problems is far longer than what we were seeing prior to the cost-of-living crisis. I think awareness of how to access support is really key because a lot of the women don't know how to go about it, and there needs to be more thought put into the detail and reality of relocating families and distributing the right support so that it's done effectively, efficiently, and safely.
It’s particularly hard to access larger government funding as a smaller, specialist by-and-for organisation – not only because of barriers in the application process, including capacity and length, accreditation requirements, and very Eurocentric language, but you’re also having to compete with larger, well-funded organisations that can more easily apply and fulfil requirements. I keep hearing that there will be change, but we keep being invited to apply for funding that we know we don’t have any chance of winning. That's not equitable at all. The government needs to create a pathway that forces accountability for funders to make it accessible, especially for specialist grassroots organisations, because there are so many boundaries and restrictions. One of these is the threshold of income, preventing a lot of us from being able to access funding. We need ring-fenced government funding for specialist grassroots organisations to support capacity building, and a consortium of organisations working together to identify funding opportunities and support grassroots organisations in applying for them. This would alleviate a lot of infrastructure barriers that organisations are experiencing.
Please could you tell us more about your thoughts or experiences on the response to victim-survivors of domestic abuse within Black, African, Caribbean, and Mixed Heritage communities, and what you think needs to change?
As a Black woman and survivor of domestic abuse, I have had to knock on doors in local areas to be seen by those that need to see us. This has included developing my own digital campaigns, highlighting some of the issues affecting Black women, to prevent harmful practices and promote zero tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) & #GenderBasedAbuse. I’ve also tried to unite local services in campaigns which have been displayed in public spaces featuring the Black women in those areas working daily to tackle gender-based abuse.
But it hasn’t been easy. Being a Pioneer at SafeLives has helped me to develop my confidence in this regard, to not be afraid to knock on those doors, create my own table and space to lead change. I have been fortunate and found allies who have helped my voice to be heard, enabling me to amplify the voices of women accessing our services. It is a slow process, but I will persevere until we see real, significant change!
Slowly, some local areas are now starting to see us and want to work with us to reach more Black, African, Caribbean and Mixed Heritage women who are affected by harmful practices and domestic abuse. But for us to see more change, we need to see more local areas truly including us in their processes without taking ownership of our work. We need areas to value and listen to our expertise, not because it’s Black History Month, but all year round.
