Social entrepreneur´s profile:

From Victims to Survivors 

Ashoka Fellow Ana Bella is bringing attention to the situation of women who face domestic violence during the lockup. Thanks to her testimony and from many other survivors of domestic violence in Spain, many victims who are confined with their abusive partners, are finally reaching out to ask for help. They find relief in Ana Bella’s network, a safe space in their community to accompany them throughout this difficult process. 

Social Entrepreneur: Ana Bella Estévez

Organization: Fundación Ana Bella

Field: Ensuring well-being of social groups in the context of isolation/lockdown

Needs for social innovation to have more impact: Business planning; fundraising strategy; legal

Before and after Corona: From empowering to protecting domestic abuse Victims

The mission of the social enterprise before Corona:

Ana Bella Estévez is shifting the focus of media and support programs that address gender-related violence toward seeing women as survivors instead of victims. Ana Bella helps victims avoid social exclusion by leveraging their strengths and capabilities that empower them as survivors and effective workers. To reach the 80 percent of invisible victims that do not report the abuses and do not benefit from the official resources designed for  them, Ana Bella creates peer-to-peer support networks of women survivors helping victims to break free from violence and accompany them to the resources to get back on their feet. Volunteer survivors are trained to transform their suffering into empathy and expertise, acting as changemakers in their communities by providing customized support to women that complements and/or fills the gaps of public resources.  

Ana Bella involves companies as changemakers using co-created programmes to accelerate systemic changes, influencing the current approach of available programs and resources to be better adapted to address women’s specific needs, thereby supporting their recovery. 

What changed with Corona?

The threat of danger for domestic abuse victims increases every day the lockdown continues because victims cannot escape. 80 percent of domestic violence victims remain invisible, and now they are confined with their abusers. Violence critically intensifies during lockdown and victims are more isolated than ever, which reduces their capacity to react to the abuses. This increases the barrier to break the silence and ask for support. 

The (biggest) challenge: Domestic Abuse Victims face tough choice: Lockdown with Abuser or be Exposed to COVID-19

The lockdown requires people to stay inside their homes as much as possible. But what is one to do when someone who is dangerous to your mental and physical health also lives at that home? Domestic violence is on the rise and victims are forced to decide which danger to take their chance with: domestic abuse or risk disobeying the law during lockdown or, worse spreading COVID-19Where does one turn when danger is around every corner? 

The solution: Channelling the empathy and expertise of survivors to detect and encourage invisible victims confined to their abusers during Covid-19, to break free from violence.

The number of women reporting abuse to the Ana Bella Foundation has increased fourfold during the Coronavirus lockdown. They are afraid to report to the police during the state of alarm, but they ask for the support of a friend that understands their situation. To reach those 80 percent of invisible battered women who do not legally report their abuser, Ana Bella focuses on the benefits of “breaking away” instead of the dangers of remaining in an abusive relationship. By building on the strengths of survivors (rather than only focus on treating the negative consequences of domestic violence), she is reducing the time it takes for women to begin the process of moving away from their abuser/perpetrator. #DoNotStayHome Ana Bella’s campaign is encouraging victims to speak up during Covid-19.   

Every day, domestic abuse victims receive a message of strength and empowerment from someone who has experienced what they are experiencing. These messages of empathy may just be the antidote to the disease of domestic violence. 

Ana Bella’s Women Network provides individualized support and accompaniment for each woman who reaches out to ask for help in coordination with the available resources of each country. This is thanks to their worldwide network of volunteer survivors. During Covid-19, they have intensified telephone monitoring, WhatsApp and their Facebook private group called Women’s Network, serving more than 100 women per day in Spanish-speaking countries, and 70 women a week in Spain alone. For the ones that do not dare to break the relationship with their abusers, they provide personal skills, advice, customized monitoring and psychological therapy, to deal with the situation in a safe way.  

As Ana Bella is not an official government institution, it is easier for her network to reach out to victims as friends, despite the close range of the perpetrator´s control during Covid-19. Ana Bella also reaches the victims through their families (grandparents, teenager daughters, sisters) and creates a strategy to save them.  

Ana Bella helps abused women to break their silence and report the abuse, even during the current state of alarm. When the victims do not want to go to a shelter, Ana Bella enables them to change their residence temporarily to avoid the risk of staying at home with the abusers.

The personal biggest worry and hope:

Ashoka: How are you dealing with the situation and what is your biggest personal worry?

Ana Bella: Dealing: “Intensifying my work  and co-creating new formulas with companies, media and survivors to reach more invisible victims confined with their abusers.

Ana Bella: Personal Worry: “the suffering of every woman confined with their abuser that calls me asking for support.”

Ashoka: What is inspiring you and giving you hope that we can overcome this crisis?

Ana Bella: Covid-19 is generating evidence of the magnitude of other global and invisible pandemic affecting 1,2 billion women which is gender-based violence. In many countries, assisting victims has been claimed as an essential activity that cannot be stopped during the state of alarm. I am envisioning a society able to face violence against women with the same forcefulness that they are responding to the coronavirus crisis.