Local Program Receives Community Awareness Funding for 2022 National Crime Victims’ Rights Week

Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch has announced that her office has received funding from the National Association of VOCA Assistance Administrators (NAVAA) through a grant from the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC), within the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, to promote community awareness of crime victims’ rights and services during the 2022 National Crime Victims’ Rights Week.

The awarded funding will be used to host a Community Resource Fair on Saturday, April 30th from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm. Together with partner agencies, the fair offers an opportunity for victims and others to see the supportive nature of the community by increasing the awareness of victim/survivor services in Sonoma County. The event will be held at the Family Justice Center Sonoma County, 2755 Mendocino Avenue, Santa Rosa. There will be community based organizations, as well as law enforcement agencies, comfort dog programs and more providing information about a wide variety of programs available in Sonoma County.

Ravitch noted that, “The support from NAVAA and OVC for 2022 National Crime Victims’ Rights Week will help us help crime victims. Members of our community are encouraged to help promote justice by supporting victim assistance programs on a daily basis.  We invite all to come and see the amazing programs we have here in our county.”

First designated by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, National Crime Victims’ Rights Week increases general public awareness of, and knowledge about, the wide range of rights and services available to people who have been victimized by crime.  The theme for 2022 National Crime Victims’ Rights Week is “Rights, access, equity for all victims”.

Since 2004, the NCVRW Community Awareness Project has provided financial and technical assistance to more than 1,000 community projects that promote victim and public awareness activities, innovative approaches to victim outreach, and public education about victims’ rights and services during National Crime Victims’ Rights Week. The Victim Services Division of the District Attorney’s Office was one of the 50 recommended by NAVAA and selected for funding by OVC for 2022 from the 240 applications that were submitted nationwide.

For additional information about 2022 National Crime Victims’ Rights Week activities or victims’ rights and services in Sonoma County, please contact the Victim Services Division at 707-565-8250, or visit our website at https://da.sonomacounty.ca.gov/divisions/victim-services. For information about national efforts to promote 2022 National Crime Victims’ Rights Week, please visit the Office for Victims of Crime website at www.ovc.gov.

The National Association of VOCA Assistance Administrators is a non-profit organization that represents the 56 state agencies that distribute money from the federal Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) Crime Victims Fund to more than 4,000 direct victim assistance service providers. The money in the Crime Victims Fund comes from fines collected from offenders convicted of federal crimes and not from U.S. taxpayers.

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