Fight For Dignity

Every year, an average of 200,000 women are victims of physical and/or sexual violence. 1 woman in 3 will be a victim of violence in her lifetime.¹.

Faced with these alarming figures, health professionals, social workers and others must play a major role in caring for victims of violence. Indeed :

• Violence against women has consequences for their mental, reproductive and physical health, and for their children.
• They generate high socio-economic costs in terms of healthcare, lost productivity and measures to combat violence.².

Generally speaking, care for these women is inadequate or poorly adapted. The recommendations are clear: women must receive comprehensive care (medical, psychological, social and legal) as early as possible and in the right place.

The Fight for Dignity method

With this in mind, Laurence Fischer has developed an adapted karate method to support women who have experienced violence. The aim is to help women regain awareness of their bodies and reconnect with their inner selves, while restoring their self-esteem and self-confidence. But this is not a self-defense workshop.

The Fight for Dignity karate workshop is fully integrated into the care offered in medical facilities for women who have experienced violence. Sessions are taught by state-certified instructors who have been trained by us not only in the teaching method, but also in the post-traumatic stress disorders from which the women benefiting from the sessions suffer.

First applied at Maison Dorcas, erected by Dr Denis Mukwege’s Panzi Foundation in Bukavu (DRC), this method, combining warm-up exercises and games, karate techniques/gestures, and relaxation, was duplicated in France from 2018. The first workshop, at the Maison des femmes in Saint-Denis (93), was joined, over six years, by 14 others, all integrated into a medicalized structure, with a holistic approach, so that beneficiaries are always referred by the medical profession.