Things have really paid off for the University of Idaho Women’s Center this semester.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women recently awarded the Women’s Center with a grant of nearly $300,000.
The grant award is aimed toward funding UI’s Campus Violence Prevention Project to help adapt existing campus violence prevention education programs and to enhance outreach to underserved populations on campus.
“The focus of the grant is specifically on developing prevention education and outreach services for students that come from diverse backgrounds,” said Lysa Salsbury, director of the Women’s Center.
Members of the Women’s Center have many different plans in order to help spread culturally competent, community responsive and population-specific prevention education programming to students.
“There’s going to be some different focuses for the grant,” Salsbury said. “We are going to expand our existing violence prevention programming.”
This will include things such as adapting the material that is currently delivered in the programming to address different cultural populations and to establish inclusion to all of the diverse populations at the university, Salsbury said.
“We’re really going to look at programs that we’re doing already and make sure we are addressing the needs of all the students who want to go through those programs,” Salsbury said.
Along with adapting programs on campus, Erin Agidius, associate director of Human Rights, Access and Inclusion, said the grant has another purpose.
“The purpose of the grant is to help address issues that occur around our campus,” Agidius said.
Salsbury said another plan the Women’s Center has for the grant money is to develop materials that provide students with concise information about resources and support services on campus — to have them translated into different languages and make them accessible for international students and others.
“We’re really hoping to work with the Northwest Network on ways to implement responsive programming and support services that address the needs of the LGBTQA community,” Salsbury said.
The Northwest Network is a group based in Seattle that focuses on LGBT advocacy and training, Salsbury said.
“Given our role with the diversity and human rights unit, and the fact that we have increasing student populations of LGBTQA students, of multicultural students and international students, I decided we should apply for this grant,” Salsbury said. “This is a really great opportunity for us to get funding and to develop programs that are specific to this population.”
Salsbury said the application process for the grant was tedious. She said there were about 20 or 25 different pieces that went into the application — from a 20-page narrative, to partnerships with individuals across the region.
“We ended up being one in 45 different institutions that was funded. They gave out $25 million this year, and we were one of them,” Salsbury said.
Salsbury said many people throughout UI helped with the grant application process, including Executive Director of Tribal Relations Yolanda Bisbee, Assistant Director of Programs Bekah MillerMacPhee and Agidius.
“It was really a team effort, and it was quite the adventure to pull it all together,” Salsbury said.
Savannah Cardon can be reached at [email protected]