U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs Office for Victims of Crime
	Washington, D.C. 20531 January 2, 2002

Dear Colleague:

I am pleased to present to you the 2002 National Crime Victims' Rights Week Resource Guide, developed for the first time in partnership with the National Center for Victims of Crime. By bringing together the most critical elements of past Office for Victims of Crime Resource Guides and the National Center's Strategies for Action Kit, this year's Resource Guide offers you a dynamic vehicle for carrying out outreach and public education campaigns in your own community.

The annual commemoration of National Crime Victims' Rights Week gives us a unique opportunity to celebrate the tremendous progress made on behalf of victims and to help lend a measure of dignity and respect to their plight. This year's theme, "Bringing Honor to Victims," encapsulates the goal of the thousands of victim advocates and victims themselves who have labored over the years in an effort to gain standing and equity within the criminal justice system and in society as a whole. It points up that we are striving not simply for certain basic legal rights, but for a very fundamental sense of selfhood and humanness very often denied victims.

The Office for Victims of Crime has the great privilege each year of helping to lead communities across the country in their observances of National Crime Victims' Rights Week. The terrorist attacks of September 11th, while giving a very public urgency to America's public safety concerns and underscoring the need for strong national guidance, have not changed the fact that the real force behind victim services lies in people like you who work day in and day out at the local level.

There seem to be far too few opportunities to pay tribute to the men and women who have dedicated themselves to lives of help and healing. We in the Office for Victims of Crime are grateful for the chance that National Crime Victims' Rights Week gives us to do so. On behalf of all of us, thank you for all you do!

Sincerely,

John W. Gillis
Director