Reimagining Expanded Choices Offering Victim Empowerment and Restoration (RECOVER) Project

The Network for Victim Recovery of DC (NVRDC), in partnership with New York University's Center on Violence and Recovery (CVR) proposes the Reimagining Expanded Choices Offering Victim Empowerment and Restoration (RECOVER) Project. The goal is to enhance community-led collaboration to increase restorative justice (RJ) options for victims in DC that result in improved victim healing, community restoration, and multiple access points for overall supportive services.

RECOVER will conduct a community needs assessment; complete landscape review of current RJ services; partner with CVR who will provide evaluation support; appoint a steering committee—which includes persons with lived experience in the victimization or communities addressed by the project—to review and provide input on all program materials to be developed; create a replication toolkit; and submit a final report.

RECOVER seeks to promote racial equity and remove barriers to access specifically for Black survivors in the District, among which there is a significant appetitive for alternative options, including RJ. Providing survivor-defined options are important because marginalized communities encounter greater barriers to accessing traditional systems and because the systems are not generating equitable healing or meaningful restoration.

An additional 7 partners will serve on the Steering Committee and/or serve as RJ Facilitators, including DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence, DC Peace Team, DC Justice Lab, Asian/Pacific Islander Domestic Violence Resource Project, Free Minds, Georgia Avenue Family Support, and the Office of the Attorney General for DC.