NCVC's Peer-to-Peer Support Program for Communities

The National Center for Victims of Crime/NCVC serves as a pass-through entity and TTA provider for programs using or interested in establishing trauma-informed peer-to-peer support programs to provide greater access or enhance the quality of assistance and services to more crime victims. Most peer-to-peer work began in culturally specific communities, long before mainstream organizations acknowledged its importance in victim services. The proposed project places a strong emphasis on ensuring that culturally specific programs, that know this work well, are a part of this process and that their work is centered in this space. Through this project, NCVC will accomplish the following goals:

Identify innovative, or non-traditional programs specifically designed for the communities or populations to be served, which may lead to models that can be duplicated in other communities. NCVC’s focus will be to undertake the development of a competitive funding opportunity to provide subawards to 10 community sites doing peer-to-peer work. As the TTA provider, NCVC will assist and support communities across the country in establishing or expanding programs to support crime survivors. To aid in capacity building, the TTA provided will support subgrantees on administrative and programmatic aspects of their peer led programs. Programs may be in the form of independent and peer-run programs, mutual support groups, mentoring programs, or peer-to-peer support within community-based organizations.

Building the knowledge about, and community capacity to provide, peer-to-peer support options for victims of all types of crime. NCVC will work contractually with Urban Institute as the project evaluation partner. Evaluation will include the development of the data collection instrument, performance measure tracking, focus groups, analysis, and reporting.

To provide comprehensive TTA that serves the needs of historically underserved populations, NCVC partners with subject matter experts. These partners make up the Peer-to-Peer Advisory Council serving as subject matter experts who inform NCVC's project team and the selected community sites.