Desert Sun, the South Okanagan Integrated Community Services Society, has received funding from the province’s civil forfeiture program toward its Desert Sunshine Education Day program.

“This program is an extremely important tool toward combating violence against women,” Boundary-Similkameen MLA Linda Larson said. “We must do all we can to support all people in our goal toward a violence-free society.”

A grant of $9,000 will go toward specialized two-day training for rural front-line workers in the anti-violence sector and other sectors on the impact of violence and how best to support victims seeking help. The project will also include a community presentation on violence against women.

“As the South Okanagan’s primary non-profit service provider of counselling for families, men, women and seniors, we are thrilled to be the recipient of this grant to use toward offering training to other community service providers from the Okanagan, Boundary and Interior region,” said Tamara Aspell, executive director, Okanagan Integrated Community Services Society.

“We are in the preliminary stages of developing what we know will offer valuable skills combined with education, prevention and awareness, across the sector to those attendees working to respond to violence against women.”

This year, the priority focus for civil forfeiture proceeds is on initiatives about violence against women, through the Violence Free BC initiative, as it will be in years to come. Other areas where funding was made available included serving victims through restorative justice, community and youth crime prevention, and police training and equipment.

For this round of civil forfeiture grants, a call for applications was made in November 2014 and recipients were selected using the established grant criteria set out in the application form.

Since the civil forfeiture program became active, it has returned approximately $15 million from successful forfeiture actions to crime prevention and victims programs in B.C.

Violence Free BC is the provincial government’s long term strategy and commitment to end violence against women. Acting as a roadmap, Violence Free BC combines immediate actions with a long-term vision to end the violence, and to support women whose lives and well-being have been impacted by violence.