What we do
Our journey to heal, empower and emerge
Over the past 18 years, Emerge has worked in Sri Lanka to empower girls who have survived abuse to celebrate their strength and resiliency, develop their self-sufficiency, and to become leaders in their own communities.
Emerge works with girls who have survived abuse or exploitation and have had the courage to speak out, stand up for their beliefs, and protect others. During their court cases against their abusers, these young women are placed in government-run shelters that maintain strict anonymity for their protection, and lack the bandwidth to provide safe community-based life skills or education programs. Without access to meaningful, trauma informed education, these courageous young women are left with a lack of knowledge to navigate the world safely once they have emerged from the shelter system, leaving them vulnerable to unsafe work, exploitation, trafficking, and abuse.
Our work aims to provide these brave young women with the skills, resources, and education they need to succeed in their adult lives. Our programmes support them not only in healing but give them the concrete foundation needed to launch their futures.
Emerge provides programmes such as Life Skills, Mental Health and Wellbeing, Reproductive Health, Mentorship, and Beads-to-Business within shelters, while the Reintegration Centre captures the deeper knowledge transference of experiential learning, through practical, hands-on mechanisms including Value Based Lessons, Self-Defense, Reproductive Health, IT Skills, English Classes.
Emerge is also expanding its work by connecting with government appointed caregivers like Probation Officers and free-lance lawyers on facilitating sensitization and capacity building workshops. The knowledge focuses on essential skills one must have when providing care and counsel to a child who is battling trauma and is in the state-run system. Emerge also touches on mental health, self-care and mental health maintenance skills during these structured workshops.