Common Threads Project Releases Community Impact Report Documenting Transformative Healing for Survivors of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence
Common Threads Project Releases 2025 Community Impact Report. Common Threads Project (CTP), a nonprofit delivering trauma-processing care for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, has released Heard. Held. Healing. — Its 2025 Community Impact Report. The report documents outcomes across seven program sites in the U.S., Ecuador, Nepal, Nigeria, and Ukraine. In 2025, 220+ survivors participated in healing circles; 85.5% said that making story cloths helped them heal.
New York, NY, June 25, 2026 --(PR.com)-- Common Threads Project (CTP), a nonprofit organization dedicated to the psychological recovery of survivors of gender-based violence (GBV), today released its 2025 Community Impact Report, a comprehensive account of the lives touched, communities strengthened, and healing catalyzed through CTP's signature story cloth healing circle model for trauma processing.
The report documents 2025 program outcomes across CTP's active sites in the United States (Washington, DC metro area, New York, and Seattle), as well as international programs in Ecuador, Nepal, Nigeria, and Poland/Ukraine. Since its founding and the launch of its pilot program in Lago Agrio, Ecuador, in 2012, Common Threads Project has reached more than 1000 survivors of GBV, and that number continues to grow.
Healing That Ripples Outward
“When one person heals, it ripples across families and communities,” said Common Threads Executive Director Vesna Golic. “This report tells the story of that healing, not just in numbers, but in the lived experience of survivors who have reclaimed their voices, their futures, and their power.”
Key highlights from the 2025 Community Impact Report include:
● 220+ survivors participated in CTP healing circles during the reporting period.
● 44 clinicians completed the first phase of training, and another 55 completed advanced training, expanding the cohort to almost 100 worldwide who are equipped to carry the Common Threads model to hundreds more facilitators and survivors.
● The launch of Phase One of a multi-year study with Johns Hopkins Medicine’s International Arts + Mind Lab, which includes a scoping review of how handwork, stitching, and story cloths support well-being across cultures and history.
“The survivors’ stories, their healing journeys, and the changes we witness in their lives have long demonstrated the power of this work,” added Golic. “Our partnership with Johns Hopkins Medicine’s International Arts + Mind Lab represents an important opportunity to deepen our understanding of why and how these outcomes occur. By examining the role of story cloths within our trauma-processing methodology, we hope to strengthen the evidence supporting an approach that has helped more than a thousand of survivors reclaim safety, connection, and hope.”
A Model Rooted in Culture and Evidence
CTP’s approach distinctively draws on the ancient tradition of making story cloths, a practice found across diverse cultures in which women stitch their experiences onto fabric to make the unspeakable visible. This tradition is integrated into evidence-based, trauma-processing psychotherapy, psycho-education, and mind-body work, delivered through carefully designed healing circles facilitated by trained local clinicians.
By prioritizing local capacity-building and culturally responsive care, CTP ensures that healing is not a one-time intervention but a lasting, community-held resource.
Read the Report
The 2025 Community Impact Report is available for download at www.commonthreadsproject.org/resources/2025-community-impact-report . CTP invites supporters, partners, clinicians, and community members to read, share, and join the movement toward a world where every survivor of sexual and gender-based violence has access to deep, lasting, and transformative psychological recovery.
About Common Threads Project
Common Threads Project is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to deliver and study trauma processing in survivors who’ve endured the psychological effects of sexual and gender-based violence in the context of war, displacement, and human trafficking. CTP builds local capacity through clinician training, scalable interventions based on neuroscience and art expression, and efficacy research, partnering with local organizations across the globe to deliver survivor-centered, culturally responsive trauma care. Learn more at www.commonthreadsproject.org.
commonthreadsproject.org/reports
The report documents 2025 program outcomes across CTP's active sites in the United States (Washington, DC metro area, New York, and Seattle), as well as international programs in Ecuador, Nepal, Nigeria, and Poland/Ukraine. Since its founding and the launch of its pilot program in Lago Agrio, Ecuador, in 2012, Common Threads Project has reached more than 1000 survivors of GBV, and that number continues to grow.
Healing That Ripples Outward
“When one person heals, it ripples across families and communities,” said Common Threads Executive Director Vesna Golic. “This report tells the story of that healing, not just in numbers, but in the lived experience of survivors who have reclaimed their voices, their futures, and their power.”
Key highlights from the 2025 Community Impact Report include:
● 220+ survivors participated in CTP healing circles during the reporting period.
● 44 clinicians completed the first phase of training, and another 55 completed advanced training, expanding the cohort to almost 100 worldwide who are equipped to carry the Common Threads model to hundreds more facilitators and survivors.
● The launch of Phase One of a multi-year study with Johns Hopkins Medicine’s International Arts + Mind Lab, which includes a scoping review of how handwork, stitching, and story cloths support well-being across cultures and history.
“The survivors’ stories, their healing journeys, and the changes we witness in their lives have long demonstrated the power of this work,” added Golic. “Our partnership with Johns Hopkins Medicine’s International Arts + Mind Lab represents an important opportunity to deepen our understanding of why and how these outcomes occur. By examining the role of story cloths within our trauma-processing methodology, we hope to strengthen the evidence supporting an approach that has helped more than a thousand of survivors reclaim safety, connection, and hope.”
A Model Rooted in Culture and Evidence
CTP’s approach distinctively draws on the ancient tradition of making story cloths, a practice found across diverse cultures in which women stitch their experiences onto fabric to make the unspeakable visible. This tradition is integrated into evidence-based, trauma-processing psychotherapy, psycho-education, and mind-body work, delivered through carefully designed healing circles facilitated by trained local clinicians.
By prioritizing local capacity-building and culturally responsive care, CTP ensures that healing is not a one-time intervention but a lasting, community-held resource.
Read the Report
The 2025 Community Impact Report is available for download at www.commonthreadsproject.org/resources/2025-community-impact-report . CTP invites supporters, partners, clinicians, and community members to read, share, and join the movement toward a world where every survivor of sexual and gender-based violence has access to deep, lasting, and transformative psychological recovery.
About Common Threads Project
Common Threads Project is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to deliver and study trauma processing in survivors who’ve endured the psychological effects of sexual and gender-based violence in the context of war, displacement, and human trafficking. CTP builds local capacity through clinician training, scalable interventions based on neuroscience and art expression, and efficacy research, partnering with local organizations across the globe to deliver survivor-centered, culturally responsive trauma care. Learn more at www.commonthreadsproject.org.
commonthreadsproject.org/reports
Contact
Common Threads Project
Anni Hmelar
+1 650 387 4499
commonthreadsproject.org
Anni Hmelar
+1 650 387 4499
commonthreadsproject.org
Contact
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Common Threads Project 2025 Community Impact Report Cover
Full-color image of new report on trauma processing methodology and evidentiary outcomes
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