• Give a Bag and Give Love

    Traveling Heart Initiative

    The Women's Wisdom Initiative provides unique hospital bags for survivors of sexual assault. Each bag comes with an original handmade Traveling Postcard enabling voices of compassion and empathy to travel where they are needed most.

    Information for Shelters and Aid Agencies
    Traveling Heart Initiative

With your help we are able to donate our bags to rape crises centers for free.

Add your voice to this growing movement of solidarity with survivors of sexual assault. Donate a bag to a survivor and get one for yourself or a friend at the same time!



With your $100 tax deductible donation we will deliver two beautiful hand-block print bags; one to you and one to a survivor. Every bag that goes to a survivor comes with an original Traveling Postcard.

  • Choose a bag below and let us know your color selection.

  • Once we receive your donation we will send your bag(s) out immediately!

  • Replica postcards are available and make great gifts to include with your bag.

Market Tote Bag Hand Block Print Marigold

Market Tote Bag Hand Block Print Marigold

Market Tote Bag Hand Block Print Cranberry

Market Tote Bag Hand Block Print Cranberry

Market Tote Bag Hand Block Print Carnation Pink

Market Tote Bag Hand Block Print Carnation Pink

Exhibition

If you would like to donate and have both bags go to a survivor, please let us know. A donation of $100 supports up to 2 bags. Feel free to donate as many bags as you like!


Colors
Option


We also have beautiful postcards that are replicas of the original handmade card and make great additional gifts to send with your bag!

The beauty and symbolism of the bags allows for all of us to carry the burdens together, to heal together, to listen to each other, to see each other. To say, though a bag, a postcard, the power of a positive transaction in the midst of a negative time; you are not alone, we stand with you, we have been there, let us help.”

 D. Maller

What is a hospital bag?

In the US, a woman is sexually assaulted every 2 minutes. After an attack, a survivor must go through a sexual assault forensic exam or “rape kit” in order to help prosecute an attacker. This is a battery of tests and information collecting that is necessary but invasive. Sometimes she cannot shower, use the restroom, comb her hair, or change her clothes for up to four hours.

Fortunately, advocates from rape crisis centers across the US are on hand to help these women through the ordeal and can sometimes provide a small, plastic bag with information and clean clothing.  This is called a Hospital Bag.

We have learned that only 1-4 rape crises centers can afford to distribute ‘hospital bags’.  Typically generic in scope and usually plastic, these hospital bags are a useful but utilitarian item. We think survivors deserve better!

 

Sexual Assault Advocate, Northern California

“After a long and invasive SART exam, the survivor stood slowly from the hospital bed and prepared to get dressed. As her advocate, I was bringing a change of clothes and brought her the items in a Traveling Heart Bag. Her eyes widened as she saw the beautiful fabric bag. I explained it was hers and that it contained her clothes, personal items and a postcard made for her with a message of healing and hope. I told her that the bag and the postcard were created by hand by a person she had never met but that wanted her to know she was not alone. She stopped, made eye contact and took the bag. She began to cry in earnest, moved by the fact that people she would never meet wanted her to feel cared about. “