Fundraising & Sponsorship – Victim Support Europe

Fundraising

As we believe that the most vulnerable of society’s victims should be protected from further harm, helped in their recovery and be able to access justice safely, VSE staff work to change the way victims are perceived and treated, to create a more caring, resilient, and fulfilled society.

Despite year-on-year success, many VSE priorities remain unfunded, preventing us from carrying out key activities that will help transform victims’ access to high quality support and safe justice across Europe.

Therefore, we are looking for donors, and corporate sponsors whose interests align with our mission and values, to help us change victims’ lives and reshape the way justice is administered.

Some 120 million people fall victim to serious crime in Europe every year. Most will never report the crime nor access any kind of support due to fear, lack of trust, insufficient knowledge or because of coercive treatment.

Our activities are aimed at transforming victims’ experience of justice; to minimise their trauma, help them provide testimony and improve the ability of justice actors to work compassionately and empathetically with victims of crime.

Your financial commitment will enable VSE to:

• Transform attitudes and behaviours

• Empower and support victims

• Adopt victim-centric legislation

• Make victims’ rights a reality

Below you will find a brief overview provides of unfunded projects we would like to carry out over the next 18 to 24 months, and longer-term activities that would benefit both society and our members.

Your donations will help achieve VSE’s TEAM goals.

Victim Support Europe
Rue Froissart 123-133
1040 Brussels

IBAN: BE75 7370 6710 5451
BIC/SWIFT Code: KREDBEBB
VAT: BE 0828549254

Victim Support Europe is a registered not-for-profit organisation in Belgium and donations of over €40 are tax deductible.

Connecting victims to support

Help us push for new EU laws that improve support services and safe justice for victims.

Help us implement national victim support systems across Europe by constructing services that operate to the hightest standards outside and within criminal proceedings.

116 006 Helplines

While our mission is to ensure 116006 victim support helplines are available in all 27 EU Member States – so no victim is left isolated or without support – currently only 13 countries operate national helplines.

116 006 helplines, which provide victims of crime with practical and emotional support, are primarily run by victim-centric NGOs. Their trained call handlers answer thousands of requests from European citizens who are unaware of how to report a crime or who want to be heard and to be help. Helpline staff offer information, provide support, and connect victims to specialist services.

Your sponsorship will provide resources to:

• advocate for new EU funding and changes to EU law to make 116 006 helplines obligatory across all EU States.

• engage with national governments to fund, set up and run 116 006 helplines.

• work with victim support NGOs to establish 116 006 helplines and develop European standards for their operation.

• run VSE’s Centre of Excellence which brings together all EU 116 006 operators to exchange knowledge and improve the operation of helplines.

Terrorism Reponse Network

Our Terrorism Response Network was created after the 2015 Paris attacks and works to ensure that, following a mass violence incident, all European victims are identified and contacted by support services as quickly as possible. Despite our successes, the Network is limited geographically and in the support it can offer.

The Network helps refer international victims of terrorism to their national support organisations, to develop and spread victim-centric information, and to provide long-term advice and support to stakeholders and victims.

We work with national governments and operate the EU Centre of Expertise for Victims of Terrorism to ensure our responses complement and enhance existing systems.

Your financial support will provide resources to:

• enlarge the Network, connecting with support services and government agencies around the world;

• enhance existing, and develop and adopt new, protocols and processes to improve the way the Network responds after an attack;

• develop new technical and information tools to better support victims and national entities;

• ensure the victims’ perspective is included within national crisis response mechanisms ahead of the upcoming 2024 Paris Oylmpics.

Facility Dogs Europe Network

Victims of the most serious crimes as well as the most vulnerable victims, such as children, can be badly affected by their participation in criminal proceedings. Our mission is to minimise the trauma they experience when taking part in justice processes, whilst enhancing the impact of their engagement.

While the use of canine support in Europe is in its infancy, in 2021, VSE led a multi-national pilot project (FYDO Facility Dogs Europe) to train and enable the use of facility dogs in criminal proceedings in Belgium, France, and Italy.

Facility dogs comfort and empower victims, providing them with a sense of security and safety, improving their ability to testify about the traumatic events they’ve experienced, and they reduce the stress and vicarious trauma experienced by family members and police officers, prosecutors and judges, whilst facilitating their work with victims.

• In France, 10 FYDO dogs support vulnerable victims during criminal proceedings.

• In Belgium, 3 FYDO dogs work with the police and in youth care institutions.

• In Italy, 10 FYDO dogs and 8 handlers work across the country; discussions are underway to introduce FYDO dogs to regional courtrooms.

Your patronage will help us:

• create the FYDO Europe Network, bringing together existing facility dog organisations as well as end-users to exchange knowledge, and develop services and standards;

• develop materials and awareness raising tools to promote FYDO across Europe;

• establish infrastructure for the training and placement of dogs across Europe.

Quality, knowledge, and social change

Help us ensure that organisations implement accredited standards across Europe and ensure that victims of crime receive the high-quality support they need and deserve.

Help us provide innovative, immersive, experiential, training to practitioners, network members and State actors, to encourage flexible and responsive victim-centric attitudes which ensure that victims are treated with respect, receive support, and can access their rights.

Standards and Accreditation

As the quality of European support services can differ greatly in each Member State, victims’ experience of care may simply depend on where they live; victims may even be harmed by those who are meant to help them.

Our aim is that organisations, which interact with and support victims in Europe and globally, adopt a set of clearly defined and readily applicable standards of service and behaviour that define empathetic work practices, promote resilience and empowerment, and prevent (re)victimisation.

VSE offers a member-based standards and accreditation programme which it hopes will form the basis of a framework for use by other victim support providers, law enforcement agencies, court officials, first responders, and members of the judiciary.

Your funding will help us:

• advocate for the inclusion of standards in upcoming EU legislation and design oversight mechanisms;

• further develop our own standards and carry out quality assurance inspections of our members;

• expand our standards and accreditation programme to include non-member organisations;

• support the creation of sister organisations in the Americas, Africa and the Middle East.

Training Academy

Victims today still struggle to access their rights; they are often treated badly by the police, prosecutors and other professionals; and they face significant disparities in the provision of rights and services. These problems are often caused by the inconsiderate behaviour of professionals and their poor understanding of victims’ issues.

Our aim is to bring about change to the way actors interact with victims, by transforming their knowledge on victims’ rights and policy, and their understanding of how to assist victims of crime; to share knowledge, skills, and best practices and to provide excellence in the delivery of victim support services.

The VSE Training Academy designs and delivers multi-format training for law enforcement agencies, the judiciary, health professionals, businesses, academia, and all professionals working with – and on the subject of – victims of crime through use of a comprehensive E-learning platform, hosting core

modules drawn from VSE’s pre-existing wealth of content, and from experts in the field of victims’ issues.

At the heart of our approach is the development of unique experiential and immersive training using state of the art techniques, including animation, 3D and VR videos as well case studies, role playing and other methods to provoke changes in behaviours and beliefs.

Your investment will help us:

• build core training modules and create engaging new content which focuses on the empathetic treatment of victims and communication skills, trauma informed care, resilience, psychological first aid, and wellbeing solutions to prevent the vicarious trauma of practitioners;

• build online training solutions for victim support organisations seeking to train their own staff;

• develop large scale training projects co-funded by the EU;

• build training services for companies wishing to offer victim-sensitive solutions, train employees to identify signs of victimisation and colleagues who become victims of crime.

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