AAWA’s Key Strategies for 2023
- Make AAWA.CO an easy website to navigate for visitors who want current and relevant information about abusive Watchtower policies, which are enforced by Jehovah’s Witness elders.
- Promote and help finance the Make Mandated Shunning a Crime initiative and website.
- Work closely with AJWRB.org (Advocates for Jehovah’s Witnesses Reform on Blood) to ensure that current and relevant information is available about Watchtower’s blood policy.
- Shift the focus to the undue influence that Watchtower brings to bear on its members to enforce policies which violate basic human rights. To this end, we will promote and support the activities of the Open Minds Foundation (openmindsfoundation.org)
- Make grant applications for special projects to educate and adjudicate Watchtower’s violations of human rights and their use of coercive control to elicit complicity on the part their members
- Provide information related to abusive Watchtower policies and make it easily accessible to the press and media, by using up-to-date videos, articles, fliers, research, arguments and evidence.
- Assist film makers, writers, websites and bloggers to report Watchtower abuses (i.e. Gregorio Smith’s documentary, “Truth Be Told”, etc.) – Link.
- Partner with snapnetwork.org (Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests); NAPAC (Peter Saunders), which is the sister version of SNAP in the U.K.; childfriendlyfaith.org (provides support for faith communities); infosekta.ch (helps members of sect-like communities); and icsahome.com (an international cultic studies association).
- Work with expert researchers and mental-health practitioners to compare the abuses and methods of control of Jehovah’s Witnesses with other cult-like groups, and to share the findings.
- Draft and/or share personal interest stories, press releases and op-ed pieces to the newspapers and other media outlets about Watchtower abuses.
- Organize and convene conferences, meetings and events to provide evidence of abuses.
- Meet with and educate hospital personnel, resident doctors and medical students at their Universities to explain the Jehovah’s Witness blood transfusion policy.
- Convene a think tank of scholars, lawyers and politicians to make the public aware of policies, from groups like Jehovah’s Witnesses, which violate basic human rights and break up families.
- Work with legal experts and other authorities to bring attention to the Watchtower’s fraudulent misuse of their charity status to gain tax breaks and their misuse of tax money to maintain their vast real estate holdings.
- Conduct a study to see if Jehovah’s Witnesses, a pseudo-religious group, use a disproportionate amount of the social welfare system due to Watchtower policies. We suspect, that percentage wise, more JWs are subsidized by the welfare system than members of benevolent religious groups.
- Work with universities and research teams in USA, Canada and Poland.
- Assist AAWA volunteers to take legal action against the Watchtower’s harmful policies.
- Assist writers to tell their personal stories about how they were able to leave the Watchtower and move on to lead more productive and happier lives.
We will continue to provide updates as we progress and meet these objectives. We know that there is much to do and our success will require total dedication, wide participation, and disciplined focus on our defined targets. Our hope is that we will continue to get the broad support from our supporters and volunteers that we have enjoyed since our formation in the spring of 2013.
This definitely seems to be a great endeavor. I wish you much success. I am here to help. I am 56. I resigned from wts at age 35. I left behind my husband, a ministerial servant at the time, now ex-husband and 3 children. The children are all grown leading there own lives. My middle girl had finally left the wts 7 years ago but has now just returned bringing her 3 sons with her. This is what has inspired me to seek out the different support groups out on the web.
Hi i left my husband after6 years shepherding calls telling me hide his abuse. Now my kids4 years alone draw pictures and write stories to get it out..they hurt..they still go weekly. Have to wait for me to get attorney fees..he tricks child welfare and elders.
I should add I am not trying to get her out. It her decision to be in what I believe to be a cult. This time she is not shunning me and I hope the continues. I did not know how to handle it when the boys were babies. I would hope that she wouldnt do it again. I do have a healthier understanding. This is something I would like to work to help eliminate if at all possible. My father is also a JW. He is 83 this year and has been in it since he was 7. He shunned me for fourteen years. I helped him through a life threatening situation where he needed open heart bloodless-surgery. Since then he has ceased to shun me.
Good to read positive activities among disfellowshipped members. Of my three one is helping me as I need. Avoids any information or comments about organization or his brother and sister. I just try to keep our times together positive and personal. Hoping that any one of them may come to THINK, REASON, QUESTION. If not, I have found much information of writers of the past who were global humanitarians what we need now. Encouraging to speak to people without partiality and in the interest of human life and all life on earth in knowledge, understanding, justice, hopefully progress to peace among us all.
Dear AAWA-Team,
one of your goals is “Make AAWA.CO the place to go for current and relevant information about abusive Watchtower policies”. Does this encompass information in different languages or is it focused on english only?
Best regards,
Alexandre
Our goal is to have information in many languages. Please note that the 3-part post on Undue Influence is available in French. Fliers are available in several languages.
How can I help save others? I am recently free from the Watchtower society, and I’ve been through so much because I was trapped in that mentality that they have the truth and Jehovah wants every waking hour, preach, live in austerity, don’t waste time in school, and they let me to die whenever I became depressed because of all the things I endured within the congregation and life.
Hi Clarissa. I am very glad you are out. The first step for you is to really educate yourself about the WTS, its practices, how they unduly influence people to control them and even educate yourself about their beliefs, most of which have been proven wrong. It is one thing to get out of the WTS. It is another to get it out of you. So read. Research everything you can. Don’t just take people’s word for what they say. Research it well and prove it to yourself.
When you have done all that you can really begin to help others in a way that the preaching work of JWs never could. In the meantime if you want to help others tell them to do the exact same thing.
I discovered only today your site from italy
I like it 🙂