OVC Grant Rejection and Retooling

We found out in late September that our Department of Justice OVC FY24 Enhanced Collaborative Model (ECM) Task Force to Combat Human Trafficking grant was not renewed which is disappointing. It means that I can no longer employ two students so I had to stop paying them (one will finish out her internship unpaid so at least she is getting course credit). It's definitely a weird scenario to go from having funding to pay my students and then in the middle of the semester (according to the federal fiscal year) not having funding. I will try to fundraise to continue to pay one of the students to work on a new project on policy narratives until my money runs out. As an academic, I am used to rejection but for some reason rejections with students always hit differently since we have to talk through them. It's a difficult conversation to have with students who depend on these grants.

We haven't yet found out why we did not get it but we hope that the feedback that we receive will help us in retooling and applying again in the future. We learned that Cook County was awarded a grant which is not surprising since they are one of the longest funded task forces in the country. But what was surprising was that Lake County (the county above Cook County near Wisconsin) was also awarded a grant. 

There are only a handful of grants for the entire country and instead of funding a task force that covers 46 counties they chose to fund to two counties in Northern Illinois on two different grants creating a giant gap in the state. It definitely is perplexing but this is the nature of grants, you just never know why one entity gets a grant and the others do not. Naturally, I was disappointed to no longer have these paid opportunities for my students but I will try to apply for other local grants so that the Human Trafficking Research Lab can continue. 

If you want to donate to support my student's salary you can go to the Support Our Work page. I also made keychains, which we are selling for $3. If you donate over $30 we will send you one of our HTRL bags and a keychain.

We are also working on keeping the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force going without a coordinator. Thankfully, there are many devoted members who would like to see it continue and we are working on a plan to make that a possibility. We finished the final assessment and it is in the design stage so we plan to have a listening session in November with members to get feedback and release the final report our website when it is completed. 

Overall, I am thankful for the support of this grant over the last four years and though I feel a bit lost without it I have to remember that we started the Human Trafficking Research Lab and Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force from scratch and our work will continue!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Requests

Human Trafficking Awareness Month Panel Discussion on Education

Community Assessment for the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force