Personal Contribution

During my time at Virginia Victim Assistance Network, I have been working closely with Kate Hanger who is our Victim Assist Helpline Coordinator and now also our Executive Director. She has given me a couple projects to work on throughout the entirety of my time with the organization on top of any daily tasks she needs help with. For one of these projects, I have been given the opportunity to complete an assortment of guidebooks for law enforcement specifically. I have been working on a guidebook for each topic of domestic violence, stalking, gang-stalking, and protective orders. Kate has given me free reign on how I want to approach each project, which I really appreciate, and has been open to hearing my ideas. We wanted to approach the domestic violence guidebook more towards people whose loved ones are victims of domestic violence and what to say versus not to say to them. There are times when law enforcement does not treat victims of domestic violence correctly, so I hope the guidebook helps to lead them in the right direction. I have been able to give my insight on how to best organize this guidebook and once I have finished the research, I have the opportunity to put the design and information all together to see the final product. Further, I have been able to work with an intern who is fully remote on these projects. This has been helpful in terms of accumulating information as well as talk through ideas with one another. It has helped me build not only my discipline in terms of getting tasks done but to be able to work as a team and collaborate more.

In addition to the guidebooks, I have been updating the master list of all of the victim witness programs in Virginia and the contact information to go along with it. This list is supposed to be updated very frequently by the Department of Criminal Justice Services; however, this is not the case unfortunately. Updating this list is especially important because it is the basis of how we refer victims to the right programs. We must have the correct contact information for each employee in order to help victims in the best way possible.  I have reached out to each individual program (there are about 117 victim witness programs in Virginia) to update their information. I appreciate having the opportunity to help VVAN update their list and hopefully send this list to other programs, so they have the right information as well. It has taught me that you cannot always rely on the “leaders”, in this case the Department of Criminal Justice, to get everything done. Even if is as small and simple as a list of contact information, it can help a victim immensely by leading them in the right direction.