Tribal Victim Specialist Internship Program

American Indian Development Associates (AIDA) will use grant funds to continue operating and expanding their existing Tribal Victim Specialist Internship Program, which OVC has funded since 2017. The new iteration of this program, titled Tribal Victim Specialist Internship (TVSI)-III Program, addresses the difficulty Tribes have in attracting, recruiting, and retaining qualified victim services professionals to work in rural Tribal communities. The primary goal is to build the Tribal victim services (VS) workforce capacity by linking American Indian or Alaska Native (AI/AN) post-secondary college students and those interested in a paraprofessional career with internships and opportunities in Tribally based VS programs primarily in the Southwest (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, California, and Texas). The TVSI-III Program will recruit and place up to 12 interns per year, for a total of 36 interns over the grant project period.