We are The Un-told Ventures, we started our journey to invest in remarkable people, create spaces to tell stories through art and support change-makers across the world - and here is how we were founded.
Our Founder wanted to create a platform where change-makers could share their stories without being subjected to media sensationalism.
Trigger warning: mentions of multiple forms of gender-based violence.
Meet our Founder, Sema Gornall.
Sema is a Turkish-born, London-based social entrepreneur, writer, artist and activist. She is the Founder of PowerSuit; a company dedicated to increasing the impact & outreach of businesses and empowering people and the CEO of The Vavengers; a charity committed to ending FGM and all other forms of GBV.
She is also the Founder of The Un-Told Ventures; a company created to share the stories of the untold.
Sema’s story
Sema was born in South-East Turkey, hours away from the Syrian border where many cultures came together with a rich history. She grew up with three sisters and a loving activist mother who wanted a different story for her daughters as she did not want them to go through what she has been through because of their gender. Despite Sema’s father’s emotional & economic abuse and at times physical violence, Sema kept fighting for her rights and became the first person in the family to have had a bachelor’s degree and finally broke the cycle of abuse. She proudly supported her younger sister’s university education and together, they joined arms and secured a divorce for their mother who was in a 35-year-long forced marriage. Sema’s mother was a modern slave who was abused and trafficked from age three and never had freedom until her divorce. She knew educating her daughters in a society where she was targeted for abuse because of not having any boy children was the only way she could ensure her daughters including Sema could have a safe and free life. She did everything she can to support and protect Sema and her sisters from ending up as modern slaves like herself and along the way, she still couldn’t save them from certain forms of gender-based violence as she had no support system.
Sema grew up being fully aware of her mother’s struggles, the forced marriage her mother was in, how her father didn’t love them “simply” because they were girl children and the unjust world she was living in from her early childhood days.
“I felt disappointed throughout my childhood because the help wasn’t on the way and that I had to grow up fighting for my rights and lead change myself to be the help. I always dreamed of creating a platform where we could share the “untold” stories that really matters so that these stories didn’t repeat in different generations.”
How one person’s will can change the next generation’s story
Sema’s mother Songul is a maker, she practices permaculture to create naturally preserved food from her tiny produce and makes anything that she can use her creativity in. Throughout Sema’s childhood, Songul made beautiful scarves, blankets, naturally preserved food, and handmade clothes and raised dozens of babies to support her children’s education. Songul had a strong will to keep her daughters in school and to keep them safe because all she wanted was to see her daughters becoming independent and free women unlike all generations of women that came before them throughout their family history.
“Maker women across the world are not being recognised and their hard work is invisible. My mother made things with her bare hands to feed, clothe and educate us because my father deprived us of basic human needs - just because we weren’t boys. On paper, my mother was an unemployed “housewife” who didn’t make it past primary school. In reality, she was sold when she was three with her mother to a strange man who trafficked them to another country, used them as his slaves on his farm, and abused them for many years. By the time my mother managed to run away from her over decade-long slavery, society failed to protect her and soon enough while she was still in child protection services she found herself in a forced marriage and was trafficked into another country once again to suffer in a 35-year-long abuse.” - Sema
Our Founder doesn’t remember when she “became” an activist, she was fighting for womens’ and girls’ rights and equality from the early days of her childhood. For a long time, she had few or no opportunities to get heard so she decided to create a platform when people like her could speak up and be heard.
And The Un-told Ventures began - a platform where change-makers can share their stories, have the safe space to use their creativity and speak their truth. Our work involves:
Podcasts
Blogposts
Writing books
Film production
Consultancy
Creative events