DARYL FOX: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the October 10, 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 very much, Daryl. I want to take a moment and give a huge shout out to Daryl Fox and let him know how much we appreciate him. We just don’t do that often enough, so thank you, Daryl.
And welcome, everyone, to the October briefing. Let me begin by saying that all of us at OVC are thinking about those who were impacted by the two hurricanes that hit our country this past week. Luckily, my daughter was able to safely evacuate from where she lives in Tampa, but I know that many folks lost their lives, many lost their homes, and their livelihoods, and our hearts go out to them.
I’m joining you today from our new offices near Union Station on North Capitol Street in D.C. Many OVC staffers are onsite today for an all-staff meeting, so the office is really buzzing.
We’re having our first all-staff meeting in the new building, and we love it here, but we’re definitely still trying to figure it out, and I get lost on a regular basis! But we’re excited to be moved in, and with very little disruption to our work, which I am grateful for.
We’re also 2 days away from the 40th anniversary of the actual signing of the Victims of Crime Act, or VOCA. We’ve been commemorating it all year and now it’s finally here!
I hope you had a chance to visit our special webpage that is dedicated to the anniversary. It includes imagery, social media content, and resources about VOCA that we’ll be updating throughout the month.
Stay tuned for the release of two podcast episodes. One episode will feature a conversation that I had with veteran advocates about how the victim services field has evolved since the passage of VOCA and the other features a conversation with members of the OVC-funded Youth Advocacy Corp about the future of victim services. I hope you enjoy the conversations as much as I did having them.
In addition to the VOCA 40th anniversary, we’re commemorating National Domestic Violence Awareness and Prevention Month. To mark the month, OVC is inviting subject-matter experts to address our staff on issues around gender-based violence and traumatic brain injuries, strangulation, and suspicious deaths.
We’ve also posted our October Featured Resources that highlight OVC-funded initiatives and programs that support victims of domestic violence. Those resources include the National Domestic—excuse me—the National Domestic Violence Hotline, the StrongHearts Native Helpline, and the WomensLaw Email Hotline.
Earlier this month, the Department of Justice announced $4 billion in awards from the Office of Justice Programs. Of that $4 billion, $1.18 billion was awarded by OVC to expand access to victim services by investing in programs that provide trauma-informed and culturally responsive services to victims and survivors. Let me tell you a little bit more about those programs.
OVC is the largest federal funder of anti-trafficking programs in the United States, and in FY 24, we awarded approximately $95 million to support services for adult and minor survivors of sex and labor trafficking. That includes services like housing, health, education, employment, and legal services.
One of the awards was for a new program that will develop and build the capacity of community-based organizations in underserved communities to provide services to adolescent and youth trafficking victims through the provision of mentorship and training and technical assistance to these organizations.
We also awarded $5 million through a new OVC grant program: the FY24 Trauma Recovery Center Demonstration Project. The purpose of that is to expand access to trauma recovery centers. These centers play such an important role in addressing the needs of underserved victims of violence, and I’m very excited to announce that the University of California at San Francisco, with the National Alliance for Trauma Recovery Centers and the Alliance for Safety and Justice, was selected for this award!
With this funding, they’ll establish trauma recovery centers in communities that are severely affected by violence and they will provide the TA to support operation of those centers. The Research Triangle Institute will evaluate the implementation of this pilot program.
We also awarded 28 grants totaling $5.6 million through our brand-new Meeting the Basic Needs of Crime Victims in Underserved Communities funding opportunity. This program is meant to support the provision of basic needs like transportation, housing, clothing, and food for crime victims from communities that have been historically underserved; marginalized; adversely affected by inequality; and disproportionately impacted by crime, violence, and victimization.
As I mentioned to you last month, we had an overwhelming response to this opportunity, receiving 463 applications, which was 5 times more than what we expected. 446 of those applications moved on to peer review, the majority of which elected to submit their project narratives through new options, like a questionnaire, a video, or an oral presentation.
We clearly didn’t have enough funding to meet the level of interest, so at OVC we’re exploring ways in which we can devote even more resources to this program. But I think it demonstrated that the field is very interested in new ways of making it easier to apply for a grant, and we are hoping to expand those options to other grant programs as well.
You can learn more about these and all the awards that OVC made in FY 24 by visiting the “Awards List” under the “Funding and Awards” section on OVC’s website.
And now I’ll turn to the CVF, or the Crime Victims Fund. In August, criminal fines totaled $4.9 million—the lowest total this year—and deferred and non-deferred collections totaled $15.3 million. The Crime Victims Fund balance now sits at $3.277 billion.
If you remember from last month, more than half of that balance is deposits from criminal fines stemming from the Binance and the British American Tobacco cases, which the Department has agreed not to obligate until November 15 due to ongoing litigation. So, the actual unencumbered balance is closer to $294 million.
While none of this impacts our FY 24 funding, OVC’s FY 2025 funding could be critically impacted, and as you know, FY 25 started on October 1, so we continue monitoring and doing what we can to raise awareness around this life-saving resource that we call the Crime Victims Fund.
A few reminders and housekeeping items before I sign off!
First, I am super excited to tell you that we released the theme for National Crime Victims’ Rights Week 2025. This year’s theme is KINSHIP. KINSHIP recognizes that our shared humanity should be at the center of supporting all survivors and victims of crime and is the foundation of victim advocacy.
Through this year’s theme, literally and figuratively, and you’ll see what we mean by that, we’re centering KINSHIP between connecting and healing because that is the core of our work.
Being in KINSHIP with survivors is what drives vital connections—between advocates and survivors, in peer support programs, and within multidisciplinary teams.
KINSHIP helps to maintain unity and collaboration. It helps people better understand their relationships with one another. And it plays a powerful role in a person’s life – from providing access to resources to forming meaningful connections that promote healing and understanding.
I love the simplicity of this year’s theme and all the different ways that we can apply it to our work. So stay tuned for more on KINSHIP!
Keeping with NCVRW, the application period for the 2025 NCVRW Community Awareness Project grants, or as we call them, the CAP grants, is now open! These awards are made by the National Association of VOCA Assistance Administrators in cooperation with OVC. The awards provide financial support to communities for their NCVRW awareness efforts and activities. Information is available in the Grantee News section of our website!
Registration for the 18th National Indian Nations Conference is open, so please register and share far and wide. The conference is set to be held December 10–13, 2024, at the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians Reservation in Palm Springs, California. You can access the registration website from OVC’s homepage. I do hope to see you there!
In two weeks, I’ll be in New Orleans for the National Funeral Director’s Conference where I am on a panel about vicarious trauma and how that impacts funeral directors. I’ll be in Boston to meet with the Victim Services Committee at the IACP conference, or the International Association of Chiefs of Police. And then I’ll be in St. Paul, Minnesota, for a training on trauma-informed approaches for bankruptcy lawyers who work with survivors of crime, and that one is sponsored by the Zero Abuse Project. I can’t wait to report back on each one of these really important events.
That’s all I have for today. Once again, I want to thank you all for everything that you do to help victims find their justice. Take care and be safe.
