Hi my name is Jenny and I am the founder of Believe.

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I started Believe as a way to help survivors of sexual assault because I myself am a survivor. It started when I was about nine years old and was molested by my grandfather. It happened every time we would visit my grandparents for about three years. Luckily, they lived out of town, and we didn't see them very often. It eventually came out that it was happening to others in the family as well and my mom asked me if it was happening to me as well. He wound up passing away shortly after it all came out, so I never really got closure. My mom asked me a few times if I wanted to see someone and talk about what had happened. I declined because he was gone so I figured it would never happen again, and I would be okay. For over twenty years I thought I was okay but then I started having nightmares where he was still alive, and it was still happening. I ignored it and thought it was just a dream, and it would go away. It continued happening for a few years. I didn't tell anyone this was happening, and it got to a point where I was barely sleeping more than a couple hours a night. Eventually I got to a point where I knew I couldn't continue going on like this and I admitted to my dad that I needed help because this was happening. He helped me out with finding a psychologist so I could start therapy. During my first session we talked about a few things I wanted to accomplish with my sessions, and we agreed that we would start slow and not dive into my sexual assault right away. After a few months my therapist said okay it's time and told me to make sure that I had a few days off after my next session. I didn't understand why but I listened and took a couple days off from work. After that first session of telling my therapist what had happened everything that I had been burying down deep started coming out and I then understood why she wanted to me to have a couple days where I could just deal with all of those emotions. Through therapy I started healing and learning how to deal with the trauma that I was experiencing. I learnt some coping skills for when I am feeling triggered. Once I did this the nightmares slowly stopped happening. I still get them here and there but it's now more just when I am triggered by something. Eventually I got to a point where I wanted to give back and help others who have been through something similar to what I had been through. My therapist gave me some places that I could look into volunteering at. Unfortunately, these places didn't really have much in the way of volunteer opportunities other than helping on the crisis lines and I didn't think I could handle that without being triggered. That is when I came up with the idea to start my own foundation to help others receive counselling for free because I don't think survivors should have to worry about that financial burden of receiving help to heal from the trauma of being assaulted. I met with a couple places to see how I could accomplish this goal. One of the places I met with was the Sexual Assault Centre of Edmonton (SACE). Upon meeting with them I learned that they were already doing what I wanted to do plus more so I decided that instead of starting from scratch all the money I raised would go to SACE so they could help more people start their healing process.