The Living Bridges Project is an anonymous story-collecting project documenting responses to child sexual abuse.
The goal of the Living Bridges Project (LBP) is to create a collection of responses to child sexual abuse (CSA), to learn how we can better respond to CSA in our own lives in transformative ways. Through anonymous audio stories, LBP hopes to document the ways that everyday people are working to respond to child sexual abuse, in all kinds of ways. By sharing these stories, LBP hopes to inspire others in their responses to CSA and offer a resource of hope, creativity, possibility and determination.
LBP will document all kinds of stories, and in particular seeks to find stories of how people attempted to respond to child sexual abuse in ways that were generative instead of destructive. Even if the attempts were not successful, LBP hopes to capture the often invisible and intentional work of so many to break cycles of violence and abuse in themselves, their families, communities and intimate networks as well as the complex, hopeful and challenging reality of what it means to respond to CSA in our lives.
These will be the stories of how we tried—even if we failed. The things that went well and surprised us, and the things that crumbled and broke. From small victories to set-backs, mistakes and hard lessons learned; to heartbreak and hope; to the things that supported us and the things we wish we had had.
The stories here will be from people of all different backgrounds and walks of life. They will be told by survivors, bystanders and people who have done CSA, knowing that many people have had more than one of these experiences. The reality of violence and abuse is messy, complex and full of contradictions and if we are committed to ending child sexual abuse, then we cannot turn away from that reality.
Hopefully, LBP can be one of the many resources that helps us respond well to CSA in our lives and in the lives of those that matter most to us.
For more, please see the LBP Frequently Asked Questions and Call for Stories.
"Living Bridges"
The name "Living Bridges" comes from the natural root bridges of Meghalaya, India.
The Living Bridges Project was created and is run by Mia Mingus.
Mia Mingus is a writer, public speaker, community educator and organizer working for disability justice and transformative justice responses to child sexual abuse. She is a queer, physically disabled korean woman transracial and transnational adoptee. She works for community, interdependency and home for all of us, not just some of us, and longs for a world where disabled children can live free of violence, with dignity and love. As her work for liberation evolves and deepens, her roots remain firmly planted in ending sexual violence.
Mia is a 2016 Just Beginnings Collaborative fellow funded for The Living Bridges Project, an anonymous story-collecting project documenting responses to child sexual abuse. She is a survivor of child sexual abuse and has been organizing to end child sexual abuse for over a decade. She is also a member of the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective (BATJC), a local collective working to build and support transformative justice responses to child sexual abuse.
Her writings can be found on her blog, Leaving Evidence.
The Living Bridges Project is made possible through a 2 year grant from the Just Beginnings Collaborative.