Grants & Funding

Through the American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner–Sexual Assault Response Team (SANE–SART) Program, OVC provides support to enhance the capacity of three AI/AN communities to offer high‐quality, multidisciplinary, victim‐centered services and support for adult and child victims of sexual assault from the initial point of contact through prosecution. The SANE–SART Program is designed to complement an existing coordinated community response to sexual assault.

Through the American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner–Sexual Assault Response Team (SANE–SART) Program, OVC provides support to enhance the AI/AN community capacity to provide high‐quality, multidisciplinary, victim‐centered services for adult and child victims of sexual assault from the initial point of contact through prosecution. The victim‐centered approach helps to foster dignity and spiritual, mental, and physical health in victims. As part of this program, OVC seeks the assistance of a training and technical assistance provider that recognizes the importance of culture, history, traditions, and spirituality inherent in the AI/AN community and is capable of supporting the development and implementation of evidence‐based sexual assault intervention strategies for tribal communities. More details are available in the solicitation.

This award will enable the Pima County Attorney’s Office to respond to the shootings that occurred on January 8, 2011, at a shopping center in Tucson, Arizona. Among the 19 victims shot, 6 were killed, and more than 150 victims and witnesses were in the vicinity of the shootings.

The Children's Justice Act (CJA) Partnerships for Indian Communities Continuation Grant Program provides phase III and final‐year supplemental support for American Indian and Alaska Native communities that initiated CJA projects in FY 2009, as the result of a competitive solicitation process. Recipients will continue to improve the capacity of their tribal systems to handle serious child abuse cases by developing specialized services and procedures to address the needs of child abuse victims.

The Coordinated Tribal Assistance Solicitation/Tribal Elder Outreach Program is designed to complement an existing agency or service program's efforts to enhance its outreach strategies and victim services to better assist victims of elder abuse. The program's objectives are to—

• develop comprehensive outreach strategies and foster improved and culturally appropriate services for victims
  of elder abuse;
• augment ongoing service strategies for crime victim assistance with a special focus on older victims, including enhanced collaboration and coordination among victim assistance and human services personnel, the courts and law enforcement, and community development, youth outreach, and youth mentoring programs; and
• link the issue of elder abuse in tribal communities with the traditional cultural norms of respect and reverence for tribal elders, and with the tradition of valuing a tribe's older individuals for their ability to pass the tribe's cultural legacy on to the youngest generation.

The FY 2011 Enhanced Collaborative Model to Combat Human Trafficking Program supports multidisciplinary, anti-human trafficking task forces in executing a comprehensive approach to combating all forms of trafficking, including sex trafficking and labor trafficking of foreign nationals and U.S. citizens (male and female, adults and minors). Funding under this program will support six victim service organizations in providing trauma-informed, culturally competent services to victims of human trafficking in partnership with six Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA)-funded law enforcement agencies. Together, these OVC and BJA-funded grantees will implement multidisciplinary task forces to proactively identify, investigate, and prosecute trafficking crimes while providing comprehensive services to victims. More details are available in the solicitation.

Authorized by the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA), the OVC Fellowship Program was established in 2002 to provide a valuable public service to the Nation while also giving victim service practitioners an exciting and rewarding opportunity to work at the OVC offices in Washington, D.C. Fellows provide direct operational assistance to OVC in designing and developing innovative or enhanced service initiatives, management systems, training programs, capacity-building initiatives, and program evaluation efforts.

OVC will award supplemental funding to the Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center, Inc., to expand the outreach and capacity of victim service programs throughout the Nation to better address the rights and needs of victims of identity theft by establishing collaborative regional, statewide, or community‐based coalitions dedicated to improving the response to victims of identity theft. The 3‐year effort includes planning and outreach (year 1); distributing up to 10 competitive subawards of up to $50,000 each to regional, statewide, or community‐based coalitions to help them provide networking and training to those coalitions funded primarily in the second year (year 2); and evaluating and replicating program models (year 3).

With this cooperative agreement, OVC plans to identify and replicate promising practices for providing a comprehensive array of services to family members of homicide victims. Supplemental funding will allow grantees funded under this project to implement phase III of a 3-year demonstration project. Grantees will institutionalize the comprehensive, family‐focused, and trauma‐informed interventions that have been developed through previous phases of this project, develop tools and resources to replicate these interventions, provide training and technical assistance to service providers in similar settings, and work with OVC to develop an online resource for the larger victim assistance field.

The purpose of this award is to allow the National Association of VOCA Assistance Administrators (NAVAA) to implement the National Crime Victims’ Rights Week (NCVRW) Community Awareness Project in coordination with NCVRW 2012. This program furthers the Department of Justice’s mission by supporting public awareness and community outreach and education activities for crime victims’ rights and services. NAVAA will offer limited technical assistance to selected projects to enhance their ability to promote community collaboration and publicize their local NCVRW events. More details are available in the solicitation.

The grantee will develop the 2012 National Crime Victims’ Rights Week (NCVRW) Resource Guide which will serve as a ready‐made, adaptable resource for victim service providers and allied professionals throughout the country to use during NCVRW 2012 and throughout the year. The Resource Guide assists the crime victims field in its efforts to raise the public’s awareness of crime victim issues. More details are available in the solicitation.

The National Field-Generated Training, Technical Assistance, and Demonstration Projects Program addresses gaps in training or technical assistance or in the knowledge base of victim service practitioners nationwide. The aim of the program is to enhance the provision of services and support to crime victims to further ensure that all victims are afforded the rights which they are due. All initiatives are national in scope and focus on improving the capacity of victim service providers and allied practitioners to advance the rights and services provided for crime victims in the areas of—

• child pornography;
• drunk and impaired driving;
• mortgage fraud;
• sexual assault within correctional settings;
• coordinated state-tribal crime victim services;
• consequences of mass violence, including long‐term mental health and other issues;
• access to mainstream victim services for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer/questioning (LGBTQ) crime victims;
• services for young male victims of color; or
• technologies that can help improve and enhance victim services.

More details are available in the solicitation.

The grantee will plan and conduct the 13th National Indian Nations Conference: Justice for Victims of Crime, which is the largest and oldest Justice Department‐sponsored Indian Nations conference in the country. The event will provide training for victim service providers, law enforcement officials, prosecutors, judges, health and mental health professionals, social workers, and victim advocates from the tribal, federal, state, and local arenas. Issues to be addressed include victims’ issues within the tribal criminal justice system, service delivery, advocacy strategies, and safety issues regarding, in particular, older victims of crime. The topics of tribal community responsibility, tribal responses to child abuse, assistance for domestic violence victims, and working with law enforcement and other allied professionals also will be discussed. More details are available in the solicitation.

This grant provides funding for an organization to plan and implement a 2 ½-day conference for Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) victim assistance and victim compensation administrators and staff at the state level. More details are available in the solicitation.

This project will continue to develop innovative, multidisciplinary education models (i.e., classroom, online, clinical) that address victimization issues and responses to crime victims that can be integrated into university or college curricula and faculty development. The University of Massachusetts Lowell and its partners in the University of Massachusetts system—the University of Massachusetts Boston, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and the University of Massachusetts Medical School (at Worcester)—will assist in providing comprehensive and quality education and training to future victim service providers and allied professionals that will ultimately improve the enforcement of rights for crime victims and the delivery of services to them.

The Americans Overseas Domestic Violence Crisis Center will strengthen and expand a comprehensive array of timely and high-quality services for American victims of domestic violence and their dependents who are living abroad. The center will enhance the response to American victims of domestic violence abroad by finalizing information bulletins to disseminate to the field.

The FY 2011 Services for Victims of Human Trafficking Program provides funding to victim service organizations with a demonstrated history of providing trauma-informed, culturally competent services to male and female victims of sex trafficking and labor trafficking. Funding under this program will support either a comprehensive array of services for trafficking victims in specific geographic areas or specialized mental health or legal services over larger geographic areas. Funding will also support efforts to increase the capacity of communities to respond to victims by developing interagency partnerships and public outreach and awareness campaigns.

More details are available in the solicitation.

The goal of this project is to improve the care provided to sexual assault victims by improving the Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) system response to all victims of sexual violence. This includes improving evidence collection, investigation, advocacy response, and prosecution by providing education and training to all SART members and by fostering continued SANE–SART program development and operation on the national level. This supplemental award will support the Seventh National SART Training Conference.

This project will support states in developing effective strategies for planning, implementing, and sustaining new SVAAs. First-year planning efforts should lead to the development of a comprehensive, academically based, fundamental education and skill-building training for victim assistance providers, victim advocates, criminal justice personnel, and other allied professionals who routinely interact with victims of crime. More details are available in the solicitation.

The purpose of this project is to provide culturally appropriate Children’s Justice Act‐related (CJA) training and technical assistance to American Indian and Alaska Native communities and affiliated organizations that are implementing Phase III CJA projects. The program seeks to improve the investigation, prosecution, and management of child sexual and physical abuse cases to lessen the trauma that victims experience and increase the culturally appropriate services provided to them.

The FY 2011 Tribal Victim Assistance (TVA) Discretionary Grant Program seeks to provide Phase III and final‐year supplemental support for American Indian and Alaska Native communities that initiated TVA projects in FY 2009 as the result of a competitive solicitation process. The recipients will continue to improve their ability to identify the needs of crime victims and the types of victimization on which to focus; provide direct services to crime victims; and address the needs of unserved and underserved victims.

This project will provide Phase III culturally appropriate crime victim‐related training and technical assistance (TTA) to American Indian and Alaska Native communities and affiliated organizations that are implementing the Tribal Victim Assistance (TVA) Discretionary Grant Program. The grantee will address project‐related needs and work to achieve the broadest impact on expanding crime victim services in Indian Country.