Building Resilience: Enhancing Rural Shelter-Based Advocacy for Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

The purpose of this award, funded under the OVC FY 2019 Field-Generated Program to Improve Services for Victims of Crime, will support an innovative, field-generated approach to address gaps in the availability of resources for crime victims. This award is made under Purpose Area 5: Innovative Programs to Fill Gaps in Crime Victim Services. Awards made in this purpose area fill a gap in the type and amount of assistance available to crime victims.

The Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault will use this award to implement the Building Resilience: Enhancing Rural Shelter-Based Advocacy for Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse project. Building Resilience was established to fill the gaps in assistance available to adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse by providing training, tools, and technical assistance to rural shelter-based advocacy programs. It will equip rural advocacy programs across the country with an understanding of the realities and needs of adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse in order to create and enhance services for victims of crime in their local communities. Over the 3-year project period, the project will create two advocacy toolkits, develop an online learning course, provide training curricula and training (including a train-the-trainer component), and offer specialized technical assistance.

CA/NCF