Resource Guide Overview

Dear Friend:

This year, the National Center for Victims of Crime and the U.S. Department of Justice, Office for Victims of Crime, have entered into an exciting partnership to bring you the 2002 National Crime Victims’ Rights Week Resource Guide.

In years past, the OVC-sponsored guide and the National Center’s own Strategies for Action Kit have helped communities throughout the United States promote National Crime Victims’ Rights Week. The 2002 Resource Guide merges the best elements of the two previously produced kits.

The result, we believe, is an even more effective tool to assist local organizations in their public education and community outreach activities that focus on victims’ rights, needs, and services.

As we move beyond the tragic events of September 11, this 22nd anniversary of National Crime Victims’ Rights Week (NCVRW) seems a particularly poignant opportunity to commemorate the progress that has been made to secure rights and services for crime victims, and to recommit ourselves to building a national commitment to help crime victims rebuild their lives.

We selected “Bringing Honor to Victims” as this year’s theme, not only as a way of reflecting the country’s renewed spirit of patriotism, but as a way of articulating what honoring victims of crime really means. Certainly, since September 11, Americans have a heightened sense of the harsh and tragic impact of crime on its victims—how, in a single moment, one’s life can be turned upside down and completely changed through an act of human cruelty. We have also witnessed an unprecedented public response to helping the September 11 victims, to give them hope—to honor them—in whatever way necessary.

So, bringing honor to victims means doing right by victims, helping all victims of crime rebuild their lives ... providing the rights, resources and programs that may never restore completely what they have lost, but will provide a compassionate response to the trauma they have experienced.

This year’s graphic artwork expresses many of the ways we honor victims of crime: justice, voice, respect, participation, choices, resources, advocacy, support, information, safety, counseling, restitution. “Bringing Honor to Victims” is reflected in all the Resource Guide components which can be utilized throughout the year in public education and community outreach efforts.

Resource Guide Contents:
(8 tabs, as they appear in your 2002 Resource Guide folder from bottom right to top left)