Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma: Tribal Victim Services Program.

OVC’s mission is to enhance the nation’s capacity to assist crime victims and provide leadership in changing policies and practices to promote justice and healing for all victims of crime. OVC achieves this mission, in part, by administering award programs supported by the federal Crime Victims Fund (CVF) to develop innovative training and technical assistance, and to provide direct services to improve the overall quality of victim assistance.

The overall goal of the Fiscal Year 2019 Tribal Victim Services Set-Aside Program is to provide support to tribal communities to improve services for victims of crime. Under the solicitation, OVC solicited applications for funding to support a comprehensive range of activities including needs assessment, strategic planning, program development and implementation, program expansion, and other activities needed to address the needs of a wide variety of crime victims in tribal communities.

With an award under Purpose Area 2: Coordination and Expansion of Existing Victim Service Program, the program will expand services to victim/survivors of sexual assault and shore up VOCA transitional housing options. This project will strengthen program capacity to address sexual assault and domestic violence within the Native American community through the following activities: 1) expanding the sexual assault services into a comprehensive program, including necessary program supplies; 2) creating two Sexual Assault Program positions: a Sexual Assault Coordinator and an On-Call Sexual Assault Advocate; 3) hiring a contractor to conduct a thorough Program Scan/Assessment to determine detailed needs in an effort to more fully meet the needs of sexual assault survivors; 4) provide emergency financial assistance to survivors; and 5) extending outreach and education surrounding the issues of sexual assault and violence.(CA/NCF)