From the Director's Desk, May 9, 2024

DARYL FOX: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the May 9, 2024, installment of From the Director’s Desk that we prerecorded on May 8th. This recording has been posted to the OVC website and disseminated through News From OVC.

KRISTINA ROSE: Good afternoon, everyone. It’s rare that we pre-record these briefings, but on Thursday I will be in Arlington, Texas at the Human Trafficking and Victimization Summit during our regularly scheduled briefing. I never want to miss an opportunity to share what we’re doing here at OVC, so I hope you’ll forgive the recorded message this month. 

So, I am coming to you fresh off another incredible National Crime Victims’ Rights Week. In addition to hosting the Candlelight Vigil and the Crime Victims’ Service Awards Ceremony, I was able to join in other activities with my colleagues at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives. And then, it’s funny, as soon as the ceremony was over on Thursday I headed out to Birmingham, Alabama that night and we drove to Selma the next morning to speak at a community event that was hosted by the District Attorney for the 4th Judicial Circuit. I’ll tell you about that a little bit in just a moment.

But I have to say that NCVRW was in full swing across the Nation!  There were events hosted by U.S. Attorney’s offices, FBI field offices, the US Postal Inspection Service, subrecipients of our Community Awareness Projects program, non-profit organizations, state and local government entities, I know some hospitals were even doing work, and I even saw that the National Crime Victims’ Rights Week artwork with the theme and everything made its way to Camden Yards, which is where the Baltimore Orioles play. That is a huge deal to me as a huge Orioles fan. So GO ORIOLES!!

I also had the pleasure of spending time with all of our truly inspiring award recipients. I got to meet some new people, see some of our old friends, and was issuing just countless thank you’s throughout the week for just the presence and the contributions of so many people. It was both invigorating and exhausting if that is even a thing!  But I can tell you, me--not just me, but the team, we are already looking forward to next year.

So, if you didn’t get a chance to see the events, we will be posting the recordings in the coming weeks, and you’ll be able to read more about this year’s award recipients on our--you can do that right now on our website. So I hope you will take an opportunity to watch both of the events that we held. I want to issue just another big thank you to both Brenda Glass and to Anthony Edwards for being our guest speakers at the Vigil. They were outstanding. And a big congratulations to all of our award winners.

So now I just want to share a little bit about my time in Selma. So I was invited to give remarks at a Crime Victims’ Rights Week event that was sponsored by the 4th Judicial District in Alabama, which includes Dallas County and Selma is the county seat there. So when I received an invitation from the District Attorney Robert Turner, I didn’t even hesitate. I immediately accepted because to be part of an event like that in a place like Selma that has so much civil rights history to me just--it was--I was very excited to do it and I accepted right away. 

Their NCVRW ceremony, it did not disappoint at all!  It was held outdoors, amphitheater, included speakers from the state. We had the Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, of course DA Turner, there was a representative from Congresswoman Terry Sewel’s office, the Director of Victim Services for the DA’s office in Dallas County, Temekia Sykes, and her team members Tomeka Bethel and Jakayla Kimber, they organized the event and did such a fantastic job. I have to say, their commitment and passion for serving crime victims is so strong, and I feel that Dallas County is a better place and very lucky because they are there! 

I do have to say though that it was really awesome that Sheriff Michael Grantham was working the food truck at the ceremony--yea, the ceremony, the event, and one of the Assistant DA’s was manning the ice cream truck! It was actually his ice cream truck. So it was very--it was so wonderful to see everybody participating. 

And while there, I had the opportunity to visit with Perry, Christy, Larry, and Prince at the Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth, and Reconciliation. I met them at the CVI Conference in Chicago last month and wanted to meet up with them while I was in Selma. They do violence interruption services, but also victim assistance. And, it was really--they are again just really committed, really passionate people. We ended up having dinner together, and during the dinner they actually got a call about--there was somebody who was shot and they responded right away. And it was just a stark reminder of, you know, why we do this work and--but also that we have these incredible people that are there to help. 

I had the opportunity to tour the city of Selma (thank you, Terry Chestnut!). As a history buff, I was just mesmerized. And if anybody has the opportunity to visit Selma, to experience the civil rights history that occurred there, I encourage you to go. You will not regret it. And I want to thank DA Turner and all the people we met in Selma for the exceptional hospitality that they showed, and giving us the opportunity to join them to commemorate Crime Victims’ Rights Week.

I did mention that I’m traveling this week to Arlington, Texas for the Human Trafficking and Victimization Summit, and that’s being hosted by the Arlington Police Department and the Alliance for Children. And later in the month, I will be returning to Texas, this time to Dallas, to participate in the Conference on Crimes Against Women. And there we’ll be talking about crime victim compensation and expanding services for American Indian and Alaska Native women. 

This month we are also hosting an annual meeting for our training and technical assistance providers, the first time that we’ve had a large meeting like this bring them all together. And I’ll be able to give you a sense of these meetings in my next briefing, in the June briefing. 

On May 5th we commemorated Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons Day, so I just want to take a second to share how OVC supports families of missing and murdered Indigenous people. 

As you know, in FY 22, OVC was able to expand allowable uses of our Tribal Victim Services Set-Aside funding to be able to help in MMIP cases. Tribes can use these funds to provide services like supporting families of MMIP victims, raising awareness, collaborating with authorities. We’re already seeing the impact of this--you know, these allowable expenses. 

So, looking at data from our TVSSA grantees, we have learned that between July and December of 2023, so just a 6-month time period, Tribes were able to use their funds to support 80 family members of missing persons, and we are so happy to hear that. They also were able to conduct 200 events to generate awareness of MMIP in their communities. And we’ve learned that grantees have created coordinated community response teams, they’ve prepared community response plans, they’ve hired MMIP coordinators, created partnerships with other agencies. They’ve done so much in the short time that they have had to really implement these--this new available funding. So we salute them and applaud them for the diverse strategies that they’ve employed to address the crisis and--yea, we’re thrilled. 

If you are interested in seeing more about that you can certainly go to the Featured Resources section of the OVC website. This month, we’re also highlighting resources for Older Americans Month and National Police Week. 

So, quickly a few updates.

• Let’s see. In March, we deposited $204.4 million dollars into the Crime Victims Fund. That is the highest monthly total so far for Fiscal Year 2024. And the balance of the fund right now sits at just over $1.49 billion. I guess I could say it just sits at $1.5 billion.
   
• Second, I want to put this on your calendars if you could save the date for this year’s National Indian Nations Conference, tentatively scheduled for December 10th through the 13th. And this will be in Palm Springs, California. We have put out the call for presentations, scholarships, exhibitors. And the applications for scholarships are due the 14th, presentation proposals are due the--I should say the 14th of June, the presentation proposals are due July 12th, and the exhibit forms are due November 1st. And you can find all of that guidance on the conference website that is linked in ovc.ojp.gov. 
   
• And finally, we continue to release funding opportunities on our website, so I hope you’re visiting regularly. I want to call your attention to two funding opportunities that will be releasing in the coming weeks. One is Increasing Options and Expanding Access for Victims of Crime. And this will be a field-initiated solicitation that will provide funding for programs that offer innovative solutions for increasing service options available to crime victims, expand access to underheard and underrepresented communities, and to be able to improve the way information is delivered to victims.
   
• We also will be releasing our Meeting Basic Needs of Crime Survivors in Underserved Communities. And this is a new solicitation that we’re issuing to be able to provide funding to organizations that need supplemental funding to be able to address basic victim needs such as transportation, housing, clothing, food, special needs accommodations, and other services that are related to the immediate well-being, healing, and safety of survivors, because we know that there have been cuts within state budgets. We know that there is less funding in some states for victim assistance. So, we want you to know that we have funding set aside if you need money to, kind of, restore some of those services that you, you know, you are just not able to support at this time, or don’t have enough to support everyone.
   
• And then, last, we just released a solicitation called Trauma Recovery Center Demonstration Project. And the purpose of this program is to establish trauma recovery centers in communities that are impacted by violence, with a focus on addressing the urgent need for trauma recovery support, and, especially, to access for victim compensation [for those] who traditionally will not seek it out, or they maybe are unaware that it exists. So, we plan to make one award to an organization that will fund (through a competitive process) subawards to communities that are severely affected by violence to establish trauma recovery centers, and then provide the TA necessary to those subawardees to support the operation of the centers. So these funding opportunities are just one more way that we are trying so hard to enhance rights, access, and equity for all victims of crime.

So I know that was--I was talking kind of fast today, but that is all I have--well, I could actually go on forever, but I won’t. Thank you all for everything that you do to help crime victims find their justice. I hope that you had wonderful commemorations of your National Crime Victims’ Rights Week. Take good care and I will see you next month live.