From the Director’s Desk, July 11, 2024

DARYL FOX: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the July 11, 2024, installment of From the Director’s Desk. We’re glad you’re able join us today. All audio lines are muted, as this is a listen-only briefing. For reference, this recording will be posted tomorrow to the OVC website. At this time, it’s my pleasure to introduce Kristina Rose, OVC Director, for today’s briefing.

KRISTINA ROSE: Thank you, Daryl. And hello to everyone joining us today! We are in the middle of summer, which is often a time to slow down, but we are full speed ahead here at OVC with funding opportunities, crime victims’ service award nominations, site visits, and so much more. We’re also preparing for an office move. In just a few months, OJP will have a new home at 999 North Capital Street near Union Station in Washington, D.C. 

And this month, we’re commemorating World Day Against Trafficking in Persons on July 30th, with this year’s theme of “Leave No Child Behind in the Fight Against Human Trafficking.” This global campaign is to call for action to protect vulnerable groups from exploitation and to support child victims of trafficking. 

Now you know that OVC is the largest federal funder of anti-trafficking programs in the U.S., and our Human Trafficking Division carries a portfolio of almost 400 active awards representing over $300 million in federal funding. And this year, in fiscal year '24, OVC anticipates awarding more than $90 million additional dollars to support housing and health, education, employment, and legal services for adult and minor survivors of sex and labor trafficking.

And recently, I was in Towson, Maryland, for the 2024 Maryland Child Trafficking Awareness Conference. And that was hosted by the Maryland Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention and Policy, the Maryland Human Trafficking Task Force, and the University of Maryland’s School of Social Work. I was joined by my colleague Natalia Aguirre from OVC’s Human Trafficking Division.

I have to tell you I love attending these state and local events. Being able to witness the energy and the enthusiasm of the people, many of whom are closest to the issues as they happen in real time, is really important to those of us working at the federal level. And I want to thank Amelia Rubenstein and her team at the School of Social Work for the hard work it took to put on this conference and for inviting me to be part of it.

In keeping with the topic of human trafficking, yesterday I participated in the webinar series “Freedom Requires Action,” and that’s sponsored by the Safe House Project. And the title of our webinar was Not Just a Survivor: The Role of Lived Experience Experts in Shaping Effective Policy Change. I had the privilege of presenting with two survivor leaders: María Contreras and Alia Azariah about the importance of including a diversity of survivor voices when making decisions about policy and programs in the human trafficking field. And as you know, OVC strongly supports lifting survivor voices.

I want to give you just a few examples of what our Human Trafficking Division has done. There is Project Trust Human Trafficking Outreach Kit, which is designed to help grantees who work with lived experience experts avoid causing re-traumatization in these engagements. Another fantastic resource is the Child Victims and Witnesses Support Materials because they’re specifically designed for children of different age groups to assist them in understanding the justice system, as a victim or as a witness to crime. And we have a set of graphic novels specifically developed for adolescent trafficking survivors, and those were developed using survivor and youth input. In fact, the producers of the audio versions of those novels consulted with young survivors and invited them to participate in their development. 

And a big bonus, just in case you may have forgotten, but you can apply for up to $10,000 of funding to have these documents printed for you to distribute in your communities. There is more online at ovc.ojp.gov. [Note: Applications for funding are not currently being accepted. Visit https://ovc.ojp.gov/child-victims-and-witnesses-support for updates.]

Additionally in 2022, OVC made a $1 million award to a survivor alliance, an ICF survivor-led team, to implement OVC’s Survivor Engagement Training and Technical Assistance Project. We like to call it SETTA for short. And SETTA’s goal is to promote effective survivor engagement among OVC’s anti-trafficking grantees. 

The survivor-led team at SETTA works with OVC grantees to develop meaningful collaborations with lived experience experts and, importantly, OVC added new language in all of our anti-trafficking funding opportunities encouraging applicants to propose and implement intentional and sustainable engagement from individuals with lived experience to enhance their anti-trafficking programming. We’re very proud of the work that we have done for and with our survivor leaders.

In June, I had the honor of moderating a panel of visionaries who helped to shape the Elder Justice Coordinating Council, which was established in 2010 through the Elder Justice Act, and that was—that led to a coordination of activities related to elder abuse, neglect, and exploitation across the Federal Government. And the individuals I was on that panel with—it was Edwin Walker, Dr. Sidney Stahl, and Marie-Therese Connolly, or MT as she is more informally known—but each one of these individuals [has made immeasurable contributions] to the lives of older Americans and, through their work in Federal Government, they enable countless older adults to live with dignity and thrive in their homes, institutions, and communities. 

We’ve certainly felt their impact here at OVC as we support advocates, service providers, researchers, and policymakers through the Nation in their efforts to address the rights and needs of older victims of abuse and neglect. So I want to give a big thanks to Andy Mao with DOJ’s Elder Justice Initiative for including OVC in this wonderful event.

The rest of the summer is going to be quite busy with travel. Next week, I’m heading to Pittsburgh for the 2024 Summit [on Mass Violence Victims and Survivors] hosted by the National Mass Violence Center at the Medical University of South Carolina. Then, I have the honor of speaking at the 2024 Parents Of Murdered Children National Conference in Las Vegas. And I’ll talk with them there about OVC-funded programs that help and serve victims and surviving families of these tragedies. 

After that, in the span of just 2 weeks, I’m providing remarks at NOVA’s 50th Annual Training Event in D.C., which is a big commemoration this year, and then I’m heading to Florida for the National Funeral Directors Association Leadership Conference. And then, I will be presenting on a panel on victim compensation at the National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association Conference, and that’s going to be held at Maryland’s National Harbor. And then, right after that, that very same day actually, I fly out to be present for the welcome ceremonies at the 2024 VOCA National Joint Training Conference in New Orleans. So, I have got quite a couple of months coming up, and I will have a lot to report back you on--in August, where I will be broadcasting from the VOCA conference.

And now for a few updates. First, $9.45 million dollars was deposited into the Crime Victims Fund in May, and I’m sorry to say that that’s the lowest balance that we’ve seen in almost a year. So, due to that, the balance continues to sit at just over $1.5 billion. I know this is not reassuring news, but I want to acknowledge and thank the individuals who have contacted OVC, their congressional offices, national associations, or their governor’s offices about the decline in VOCA funding. We know and we understand the extremely difficult positions that some of you are in when it comes to continuing and sustaining funding for the victim services that you offer.

At OVC, we continue to raise awareness and seek other sources of funding to address the decline in deposits, including the proposal in the President’s budget for FY25 that would actually take place in FY26 to fortify the Crime Victims Fund with a one-time infusion of over $7 billion and an annual appropriation of $2 billion. 

Many states have appropriated additional state funds to make up for the shortfall on VOCA funds. If you’re interested in learning more about how other states are handling the decline in VOCA funds, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our VOCA Center, which is an OVC-funded training and technical assistance provider. They work closely with the VOCA state administering agencies to provide training, consultation, and other kinds of support.

Next, a reminder that our National Crime Victims’ Service Awards nominations--has--the period has officially opened! And it appears that some of you have been preparing because we’ve already received nominations. I hope everyone is finding the new nomination form easy to use and less “buggy” than the form we retired. Please don’t hesitate to let us know, good or bad, how it’s working … and get those nominations in by August 1st. That is coming up. This is such a wonderful way to acknowledge someone that you know who has gone to great lengths to improve how our country responds to victims of crime.

Third, we still have a couple of funding opportunities open, including the one I mentioned last month, which is the solicitation called Meeting the Basic Needs for Underserved Victims of Crime. If you recall, this solicitation is part of a pilot project to streamline the grant application process and make it easier for applicants from smaller, community-based organizations in underserved areas to apply for funding. The Grants.gov deadline for this solicitation is July 29th, also coming up very soon. 

In addition, there are three others that are still open. One is our Field-Generated Solicitation for Increasing Options and Expanding Access for Victims of Crime, the Jabara-Heyer NO HATE Act State-Run Hate Crime Reporting Hotlines, and our Emergency Transitional Pet Shelter and Housing Assistance Grant Program. All three of those have Grants.gov deadlines of July 15th. 

I’m mentioning that deadline, specifically, because you have to begin your application in Grants.gov by that deadline in order to submit your full application by the JustGrants deadline. So, that deadline is very important! To learn more about these funding opportunities, past funding opportunities, past grants that we have awarded, go to ovc.ojp.gov, and click on “Current Funding Opportunities.” 

So, that’s all I have for today. Thank you, once again, for all and everything that you do to help crime victims find their justice. Take care and I’ll talk to you next month.