Wellington Sexual Abuse HELP Foundation has delivered a 7800-strong petition to Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson on Thursday morning.
The petition is calling for sexual violence prevention and support services to be fully funded in the 2019 Budget.
Chief Executive of HELP Foundation Conor Twyford says that "over the past 8 years, we have been consistently getting more [calls for help] every year. This year we were contracted to see 300 people, and in the first five months we surpassed that".
Less than two percent of the current budget goes towards prevention - Ms Twyford likens this to being "the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff".
"Once you're past the crisis period, there can be up to a four month wait for counselling. And that can be really harmful."
"Our vision is to see a sexual violence free world. We need more money into prevention because we'll never stop this unless the culture changes."
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The petition is calling for full funding for support services and "universal primary prevention sexuality education in schools, nationwide coverage of kaupapa Maori and other culturally appropriate, well-resourced specialist sexual violence support services".
It also calls for funding for services for "self-referral by people who are at risk of causing harm as well as those who have already caused harm and want to change their behaviour".
Ms Twyford says that the funding is crucial to the on-going services provided by HELP Foundation.
"Last year, we came so close to closing. We are worried that we're going to head there again, and we can't have that. We can't do that to our staff and to the people that need us. We just want to push this up high on the government's priority list."
Ms Davidson was enthusiastic about the petition, though she says it is "really difficult for me to comment on where the budget will go".
She says that the government is "definitely taking the issue of sexual violence seriously".
Ms Davidson agrees that "there are not enough services for people who are causing harm or at risk of causing harm. The push for that has not been hard enough so that was great to see in this petition".
In terms of lowering our "rampant" sexual assault statistics, Ms Davidson agrees with Ms Twyford that the culture must change.
"To do that, it means funding primary and secondary schools to teach our children what that looks like... that's absolutely something that needs to be happening but in order for that to be happening we will need well paid and equipped teachers, and that's something we know is not happening."
"It would be ideal if we had an Aotearoa where people had consistently healthy, consensual relationships, and that abuse was recognised and not silenced."
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