OVC Tribal Victim Services Set-Aside Program: FY 2022 Grantee Orientation Welcome Webinar

ELSIE BOUDREAU: It's great to see folks from all across the U.S. Really good, beautiful. So for those that are just joining, what we're doing is using the chat feature at the bottom of your screen to tell us where you're from, and to say hello to everybody. So we'll go ahead and get started.

I'll start by introducing myself. Waqaa, which means hello in Yup'ik. My name is Apurin, which is a Yup'ik name after my maternal grandmother. My English name is Elsie Boudreau. I am, excuse me, an enrolled member of the Yup'ik Tribe, Algaaciq, in Alaska. And a member of the Tribal Victim Services Training and Technical Assistance Team, or we call it T-VSTTA for short. So you'll hear that a lot.

We want to welcome you to today's webinar. It really is a meeting, actually, it's not really a webinar. And it's sponsored by OVC, and supported by OVC Grant Managers, the T-VSTTA team, and the Tribal Financial Management Center, also known as TFMC. So we just want to make note that this is the first time we're actually having a meeting as opposed to a webinar in welcoming new grantees. So you have been invited here today, because you have applied for, and you've been awarded a Fiscal Year 2022 Tribal Victim Services Set Aside grant. So we'd like to welcome you to the grantee community. And we're going to get started.

And for those that haven't done already, you can use the chat to tell us where you're from and to say hello to the group. You can add your how you say hello in your language if you like. And just so you know, there's closed captioning. You can use that. You can click on the CC button on the lower left of your screen. And feel free to email support@t-vstta for any technical issues. So we always want to start off anything that we do in a good way.

And I've been honored to be asked to provide an opening. And what I'll say with that is, you know, we as human beings, we always want to start and end things in a good way to honor ourselves and to honor all our relatives. Those that are with us today, those that have gone before us, and those that are yet to come. And in that we also include the animals, the land, the air, and the universe. We are a relational people, we're interconnected, and we acknowledge that no one goes through life alone. And we want to just intentionally bring that energy into the space. And believe, really holding on to the belief that healing is possible, and that it is in relationships that we heal.

So, I just want to take a moment. You can, in your mind and your heart, pray to whomever you pray to. In Yup'ik we say, which is person of the universe. But just take a moment of silence and just acknowledge your breath. And remember why it is that you do this work. Connect yourself to that energy. Many of us, we have our own, we all have our stories and sometimes in doing this work, our stories may help others heal along this journey. And I pray that as we continue to do this work, that each of our stories are kind of braided in with the people that we serve. And that in that they know that they are not alone. Quyana so much for doing this work. We want to remember those that we serve, many of whom are our family, our friends, our relatives. Those that are afflicted by any types of crime. So just take a moment to acknowledge that. And we also want to acknowledge the land that we are on.

If you would, if you want to take a moment to put into chat the land upon which you sit, that would be great. We know that that in itself is honoring who we are and our ancestors. Quyana for that. So we can start sharing the PowerPoint. So it's now my honor to introduce the director of the OVC Tribal Division, LeBretia White, and one of her dedicated grant managers, Jessica Andrew. LeBretia and Jessica will welcome you, provide information about the T-VSTTA grant, and share the role of grant managers as part of your T-VSTTA support system, LeBretia?

LEBRETIA WHITE: Thank you so much Elsie for the introduction, and giving us the opening for today's session. I just want to say good morning, as well as good afternoon to everyone. As shared, I'm LeBretia White, the director of the Tribal Division in our Office for Victims of Crime. And I am most delighted to welcome you to what we anticipate will be an informative first session of the Tribal Victim Services Set Aside webinar series for you, our FY 2022 awarded grantees.

Initially, I want to congratulate you. Congratulations on your awards. And I just want to also let you know how much we value the incredible work you and your staff provide to victims of crime, as well as to their families, their friends, as Elsie mentioned, and community members. I'm certain you would agree the work is definitely challenging, but it's also most rewarding. So for today's session, we will provide you with some general information. And there are three additional webinars that are part of this series.

So in the forthcoming weeks you'll be joining us to learn more about reports and monitoring, compliance, and allowables as it relates to your budget. And activities that you are going to be implementing with your projects. As well as we'll close out the webinar series with a focus on finances. As part of OVC, the Office for Victims of Crimes' mission is to administer grant award programs that are funded by the Crime Victims Fund. So each year Congress authorizes us to use a portion of the balance of the Crime Victim Fund to support grant programs for victim services. We definitely are grateful for the opportunity to be able to administer those funds, and again for you to receive funding in order to carry out services throughout Tribal communities, and Tribal nations.

So since 2018, this set aside includes funding victim service grants referred to as Tribal Victim Services Set Aside or TVSSA. And OVC has made hundreds of TVSSA awards over the years which provide victims with services. Actually, you have served, because you're actually doing the work, you're on the ground day to day, with providing victim services to thousands of crime victims in hundreds of Tribal communities. And for that we say even thank you today for the work that some of you have already done, because you're repeat grant awardees. And then for those of you who are new, we're excited about learning how you'll be serving those populations that are part of your projects.

So TVSSA grantees are using funds, as you are already familiar with, to conduct community needs assessments and strategic planning. You will be, and some of you will be continuing to develop and implement victim service programs, which are to provide services to domestic violence and sexual assault victims. Pay salaries of victim advocates, run supervised visitation programs to allow children to stay connected to their families. Provide civil legal assistance to crime victims dealing with repercussions of their victimization. Purchase emergency groceries, or pay for housing or shelter for victims who have nowhere to go. Amend Tribal codes to include stronger victim protections. Lease vehicles to transport victims to appointments.

Your funding can also be used to hold ceremonies to help victims connect back with their communities, as well as providing services. If you included that in your project design for family members of missing or murdered indigenous persons, and generating awareness for MMIP, as well. Some of you also will be implementing or starting to develop your construction projects, if that was included in your proposed grant activities. And so we're looking forward to learning more about how you're carrying out those activities. And not just how you are carrying those activities out, but how we can support you to ensure that renovation of existing or new buildings for office space, or temporary victim shelters are being developed. I don't want to take too much time, so I just want to conclude by saying thanks again for joining us today.

We are excited to work with you, our new FY 2022 cohort of grantees. And if you are a new TVSSA grantee, you will find the federal staff, including your assigned grant manager, training and technical assistance, contractor staff, as well as your fellow grantees to be a community of support. So take advantage of any and all of the support that we are able to provide on the federal level, but also among the community of grantees. So at this time, I will turn today's presentation over to Jessica Andrew, who's a grants management specialist within our office here at OVC, the Tribal division. And Jessica is going to provide you with some critical information, including reminders on how, or what the requirements are for the implementation of your Tribal victim service projects. So again, without any delay, Jessica, will start with today's, will kick us off with today's presentation. Jessica.

JESSICA ANDREW: Thank you, LeBretia, and thank you for those warm opening remarks. And also, Elsie, thank you so much for opening our session in a really great way. And again, thank you everybody for joining us today. We're really excited to have you here. As LeBretia said, this welcome webinar is going to be the first in a series of four. And so it's going to provide you with an idea of the support that we offer through OVC that we've established to help you meet your goals and to serve your communities. And then the remaining three webinars are going to focus on these critical skills and topic areas for reporting, monitoring compliance, and allowables and finances. And we kind of broke this up into different webinar sessions to kind of, not only to meet your needs of just being able to be flexible with the timing of things, but also to make it a little bit more targeted. So folks that are finance focused can jump on those webinars, those who want to focus on program implementation, and just implementing a victim service program can join those as well.

All of these are going to be recorded and put online, so that you can always reference them back at any point in time. Check out the webinar slides, or of course, utilize your grant manager, or TA provider for additional information as well. So for our time today, it's going to be broken up into three distinct sections. First, we're going to share a little bit of an overview about TVSSA, just following on a lot of what LeBretia had just mentioned, the purpose of the funds and how they're used. And then next, we're going to introduce you to the members of the TVSSA supports team, as well as your fellow OVC grant managers, T-VSTTA and TFMC.

But then last, what we're going to do is we're going to break you guys into some small groups to address some questions that you all may have about TVSSA. For you all to kind of meet folks within your region, and for us to kind of really get to know you all on a more intimate level. So that's going to be a little bit closer to the end. So now that you know the plan, let's get started.

So for starters, we thought you'd like to see where TVSSA grants are being used and where they have gone to. So this map is used on a color scale to show you where the '22 grant awards are geographically. So from the light blue, which shows one to five TVSSA grants, to the dark blue, which represents over 30 grants. And you'll see the large portion of our grants are in Alaska. And as part of OVC's mission to administer grant awards and programs that are funded under the crime victims fund, I just wanted to kind of reemphasize a little bit of LeBretia kind of touched on for TVSSA.

So as you all know, TVSSA first began in 2018 when Congress had put into budget to establish the first Tribal Set Aside program under the CVF. And that amount was first at 3%, and that totaled around $133 million. Over the years that has grown, and as of today, just looking at your '22 awards, we ended up doing about 169 TVSSA awards equaling, again, around that $133 million marker. And as LeBretia mentioned, you all are using funds very diversely. As you know, TVSSA funds are, it can be used for a variety of different services with a focus on providing support to victims of crime. So it can be used to develop policies and procedures, develop and implement a victim service program, run supervised visitation to allow children to stay connected with their family. Legal assistance, of course, as well as temporary support, emergency services, things of those natures to support victims of crimes. And most recently, as you all have seen with our solicitations, we've also have added options for the funding to support construction projects, and to allow for renovations of existing and new buildings, for office space as well as temporary shelters for victims.

So as you can see, as the years have progressed since 2018, the program has evolved, and that is mostly based off of you all. Your feedback that you all provided us through consultation, through listening sessions, through conversations with your grant managers, as well as your TA providers. So we thank for that constant feedback on what's working and what's not. And we will continue to use that information to help guide our projects in the future.

So what I want to do is to take a quick pause, and we want to ask you guys a quick question. So as you are starting to implement your victim service programs, many of you started, your award start date was January 1st, we're interested to know a little bit more about what you're planning to do with the fund. So on the screen you'll see there is the question is, how do you plan to use your TVSSA funds? And if you have access, please fill out what's most appropriate.

So whether it's creating new victim service programs, providing direct services, enhancing your MMIP efforts. if you can select one of the best answers that outlines your project, that would be great. And if your focus is on something different, you are more than welcome to put that into the chat as well.

So we'll give out another second and then I'll ask Lauren to close the poll for us. All right, let's see what those results are. Well great! It looks like a large portion of you are using it to expand on a preexisting victim service program as well as providing direct services. So that is really great. And again, if you typed in other, we're very interested to know what else you're using program funds for. So feel free to put that into the chat. So again, thank you for participating in the poll, and let's move on to our next topic. So I wanted to talk a little bit more specifically about the 2022 funding cycle. So the award amounts, as in the past, are based on the population data that we receive.

So OVC looks at the population that your entity serves regardless of whether or not they are in your Tribe to determine the funds that you'll receive in this non-competitive grants process. So for example, in Fiscal Year 2022, we did award over $116 million to 169 grants. And I apologize because earlier I misspoke, I said it was $133 million that was incorrect. It's $116 million for your cohort of grantees. And we all know that it takes time to navigate the complexities of managing both your victim service roles and your grants. So to ease your process, we have also extended the project period to include the option of up to 60 months. So those are some of the specifics for TVSSA this year. So now we want to take a few minutes to highlight some of the items specific to '22 TVSSA funds for those of you who haven't had a grant before. So first with this round of funding, there'll be continued focus on MMIP work in Fiscal Year 2022. And so we've listened for you and we've heard about the importance of the work that you're doing. And we want you to be able to build on the work that you've done by using the TVSSA funds to best support your community.

So for example, we've had a couple of programs this year that are focusing more on MMIP. So as an example, one program in the Midwest is using their funding to support the salary fringe and startup costs to hire an adult MMIP advocate. And then a portion of funds have been allocated for MMIP awareness activities. So focusing on individual cases as well as general awareness. And another program has a dedicated portion of their funds to help a awareness for MMIP, so missing individuals in the community. And they're using funds to rent billboards, print place cards, brochures, information and other display materials to bring awareness about the individual who is missing. As well as hosting awareness walks and other commemorative events and costs for annual awareness events that focus again on MMIP, serving victims of crime. And promoting community awareness on how these grant funds can be used to support victims and their families. Second, in 2022 OVC is offering support to help Tribes using TVSSA funds to pay for construction. And so under TVSSA, OVC now permits funding for construction projects that are reasonable, and obviously necessary as part of the victim service program.

And you've shared with us for many years that there is a shortage in housing in Tribal communities. And you've often said that there's no places for victims when they're in need, where do they go? So many of the communities are now using these funds to address the lack of office space needed for newly hired staff, under which you're expanding the victim service program. As well as providing temporary shelter for victims in need. And that is really, you know, construction really started in about like 2021 with some variations. But we are changing and of course obviously implementing and improving our program in response to your feedback. So please continue to communicate the needs of your communities with your grant manager, so we can continue to make these enhancements in these allowable activities. Whether it's MMIP, whether it's construction, again, this feedback is helpful.

So next what we want to do, is talk a little bit about services that you have. The support system that we have in place will support you as you start to take on these new awards. We know that many of you are grantees from the past. You have multiple OVC awards, and there is a small portion of new applicants. So we just want to reinforce the services that are available to you. And then to remind you that you have a robust support system available to you as a TVSSA award recipient. And that includes three distinct groups. So us, of course, as OVC grant managers, we are your first line of support as well as T-VSTTA, who is our programmatic TA provider. And TFMC, who focuses more on any financial related issues that you may have. And each group has their own unique purpose, and is dedicated to working with you, as well as us as a group to ensure the success of your program.

And so now I'd like to talk a little bit more about these roles, and more so focusing on grant management, so you have an idea of kind of what we do. So on the screen you have a very broad definition of what an OVC grant manager is. Overall what our purpose is is to provide guidance to grantees on OJP policies and procedures, what the grant program requirements are, what the federal regulations are, basic programmatic administrative and financial reporting requirements. As well as to help you navigate from start to finish on how to manage your grants. So it's two part. It's focusing on program implementation, as well as focusing on compliance. There we go. So the previous slide, again, highlight the technical terms. But what I really kind of want to focus in on is kind of elaborating a little bit more about what we do as grant managers.

First and foremost, again, we talked about that compliance piece. But it's more so focusing on providing training and technical assistance, that oversight and that expertise, to help you out throughout the lifetime of your award. And then we're also going to help you figure out what you need to do in order to adequately manage your grants and make sure that you have those policies and procedures in place to implement your victim service program. And then of course, we're also there to help guide you throughout the process whether you have questions about community needs assessment, how to build the victim service programs. We're here to help you with that process as well. And to help you achieve your project goals, and to support you throughout the lifetime. Lauren, if we can switch to the next one. Okay, perfect.

So on this screen you're going to see the list of names, and in some cases the photos, of some of our OVC grant managers that you may be working with. In the interest of time, we're not going to be able to provide you with individual bios of everyone that you see within our division. But this slide provides just an idea of some of our staff members who are part of the Tribal division. We all come from a variety of levels of experience with working with Indian Country. And we possess a really strong, working knowledge about crime victims, the needs of both the funder, and also the provider. We also have a large number of grantees who have multiple awards. And often those multiple award programs can go over many states.

So to that extent as possible we try and attempt to have a single grant manager for each Tribe. But obviously we know, that can be difficult sometimes given a number of factors, including the total number of grantees per state or the focus areas of the different grants. So we try to pair the grant managers as best we can with the same entity managing the same type of projects. And just so you guys know, at OVC, we've been lucky enough to add a few new team members over the last several months. And we've done a little bit of reshuffling with our award portfolio. So I did just want to pause here for a second, and just to put in a plug. That if you're not too sure who your grant manager is, I welcome you to use the chat box to put in your entity name and ask for the name of your grant manager, and we can get that for you. And while you all are doing that, or if you need to do that, the next slide that we're going to be doing is introducing our two TA providers.

So I'm excited to introduce to you our enhanced training and technical assistance program, T-VSTTA. And T-VSTTA stands for, as Elsie had mentioned, Tribal Victim Services Training and Technical Assistance Program. It's a mouthful so we just call them T-VSTTA. So I want to pass it over to our T-VSTTA team for them to provide a little bit of an overview of their programs and the services that they have to offer you all.

JANA PFEIFFER: Thank you so much, Jessica. Yá’át’ééh and hello, my name is Jana Pfeiffer. I'm a citizen of the Navajo Nation. And I'm a project specialist with the T-VSTTA team. I'm honored to be here in your company. As you can read on the slide, T-VSTTA is a resource for American Indians and Alaska Native communities serving victims and survivors of crime. We provide no cost support to grantees and potential grantees to increase their capacity to walk alongside victims, and survivors of crime in their healing journey.

I'd like to talk to you for a few minutes what the support actually looks like. And it all starts with relationship and listening. Our team has spent the past several months getting to know you, listening to your stories, and thinking about what supports we may offer, as you walk alongside your relatives in their healing journey. As you introduced yourselves in the chats at the beginning of the session, I saw names I recognize from Indian Nations and the Native Alliance Against Violence Annual Summit, commonly known as NAAV. And some names of grantees we've worked with as part of our preliminary TA services. We've used these points of connections to develop these touchstones.

T-VSTTA provides tailored hands-on training and technical assistance. This means that we get to support and customize our support to your needs. We believe support should be centered around the victim's experience, informed by understanding of the impact of trauma, and on people and communities. And as always, focus on healing, first and foremost. And we use that same lens as we provide programming support to you. At T-VSTTA we strive to deliver culturally relevant services, resources, training, and gatherings, with all of our offerings grounded in the understanding of sovereignty and history. Now, I'd like to introduce you to the rest of the T-VSTTA team.

All here to support you collectively, this group offers more than 100 years of experience in capacity building, victim services, program management, and American Indian and Alaska Native community support. I'd also like to call out a few members of our team by name to illustrate the depth of our experience.

Ashley Pina has been working with the Tribes as they build relationships with law enforcement to coordinate collaborations across the missing and murdered relative crisis. And next, we have Melissa Lopez. She is assisting with grantees. And they may navigate the solicitation process in developing their foundational documents. She helps with important items just like policies, processes, goals, and strategies. Melissa has been an OVC grantee, and she has been where you are right now. Next, we have Elsie, and you've met the incomparable Elsie Boudreau, who along with Marlene Mack provides tailored regional support to villages in Alaska with a deep commitment to honoring and supporting the healing of victim, of healing victims and children. We've also dropped a link in our online bio in the chats. They include a talk about me section which highlights the team's individuals' areas of focus and shares our contact information. Please feel free to contact or reach out to any of us anytime. We are all here for you. We've put a link in the chat to all of our online bios, which include a talk about me section highlighting each team member's individual areas of focus and contact information. Now I'm pleased to turn the mic over to our colleagues and support, TFMC.

KRISTENE MOORE: Thank you, Jana. And thank you to all the grantees for joining us today. My name is Kristene Moore, and I'm a training specialist lead for the Tribal Financial Management Center, also referred to as TFMC for short.

TFMC launched in 2018 to work alongside OVC to provide training and technical assistance, and resources to support the American Indian and Alaskan Native communities, as you navigate the financial management of your OVC programs. Our mission is to support the overall sustainability of victim services in Alaska and Indian Country, through high quality training, accessible resources, and customized technical assistance.

So how do we do this? We begin this partnership by getting to know the grantee we are working with, and the community they serve. We recognize that not all Tribal communities are alike, and that we are working with sovereign nations, and the importance of honoring the Indigenous ways of knowing. We understand that trust is required, and that building trust takes time. The TFMC team works closely with Tribal grantees and OVC grant managers to develop tailored and flexible grants financial management TA plans that are responsive and reflective of the unique realities of each program and community served. This allows the grantees to receive individualized TA training in a virtual, onsite, or hybrid format, which is most responsive to the needs of the community to improve the overall victim services. So we work with the grantees to enhance and strengthen their existing financial policies and procedures, support grantees and development of budget modifications and grant award modifications, or GAMs, help address audit findings and corrective action plans, conduct trainings and webinars on relevant grant financial management topics, and develop easy to use resources.

TFMC can also provide support in the budget development part of your TVSSA application cycle. So I've mentioned the TFMC team. So what we want to do with this slide is just introduce you to some of those individuals through their picture and title. Our group is made up of skilled financial, TTA, and evaluation specialists that are uniquely qualified to serve grantees with a range of expertise. Some of those including working in victim services throughout Indian Country and Alaska, vast financial management subject matter expertise, and familiarity with trauma informed and culturally humble TA approaches. A lot of our team is on the call today, and I expect we've probably worked with many of you in the past. And we look forward to continuing to support you with your awards as you move forward, thank you.

ELSIE BOUDREAU: So this has been a great discussion. Thank you, for that overview. And so all that information is so helpful. So I want to thank everyone who has shared so far. And I really hope that each of you find this session informative and that you're learning about new resources to support you on this journey of healing as you support victims of crime.

So now we are going to go into small group breakout sessions. We're going to break out by region. We've placed you in your correct region. So don't worry if you don't know where you should go. Okay? These small breakouts are an opportunity to share your successes and challenges with your peers, and to lift each other up. We know that this is hard work. And it's so rewarding to know that as you go through this you're not alone. And so you will have approximately 30 minutes in small groups. And we just encourage you to take this opportunity to get to know other grantees in your region, and to find ways to support each other.

AMY FILKO: Great, thank you.

ELSIE BOUDREAU: So we are going to send everyone to their groups. And so we'll see you back here in 30 minutes.

AMY FILKO: That sounds great. And we might do a little shuffling around. We did some, we presorted, but there might be some people who didn't get added into a room or you may not be perfectly aligned to your region. So be a little patient as we get you all into the right spaces.

ELSIE BOUDREAU: Welcome back. It looks like we've all returned from our small groups. I hope you found that time beneficial, and that you are able to meet other grantees in your region or across the states. In my group we had a really good discussion. And just identifying ways to support each other and identified something that people are grateful for. And someone indicated that they were thankful to be able to help other people, and thankful for leadership, and to support each other through this process. So quyana so much.

As you can see on the screen, there are three more upcoming webinars in this series where we will explore the core competencies common to all successful OVC grantees. So it's important to bring people to each webinar who are working on your grant, and would benefit from that content that will be shared. So for example, it would be good to bring the person who controls your budget to the session on finances. And if you haven't already done so, you can register as soon as possible for each of those webinars. We've dropped a registration link in the chat for your convenience.

Again, we just want to congratulate you and thank you for being here, sharing your knowledge and experiences. And we really hope that you've gained knowledge and resources to help you in utilizing the T-VSTTA, or TVSSA funds. We'd love to get a little knowledge back from you. So we have a poll. This will let us know your biggest challenges, and where we should focus future trainings. Just know that the answers are anonymous to protect your privacy. Thank you so much for taking the time to identify your challenges. So to end our conversation in a good way, I'm wondering if there's anyone that would volunteer to close us out in a good way. You can raise your hand. Go ahead MaryEllen. Thank you.

MARYELLEN FRITZ: So Father Creator, we ask that you be with us as we serve our families and our children. We ask you to give us wisdom to help our communities heal. We ask you to send the people that will help us heal our families, and keep our children and all our communities safe. And we ask for the wisdom to reach out and share our resources and help our new people as they're starting up. And to be with all of our families and just grant every healing that they need. In your mighty name, Creator. Amen.

ELSIE BOUDREAU: Quyana So much, MaryEllen. That was really, really beautiful. And so I want to thank everyone again for being here today and we look forward to you joining us on Tuesday, June 13th for the next webinar to discuss reporting and monitoring. Quyana So much. And be well. Take care of yourselves and each other.