Volunteer Information

Volunteer with Victim Services
Victim Services each year works with over 40 volunteers who provide over 6000 hours of service. We offer a variety of ways for interested volunteers to help out ranging from volunteer advocates answering our crisis line to volunteers who help with prevention and community education efforts.

Crisis Line Volunteers

Our volunteer advocates go through a 40 hour training after which they are Certified Advocates in the state of Minnesota. After completing training, our volunteers answer our 24/7 crisis line offering a caring voice to provide emotional support, referrals, and information for victims of sexual assault and other crimes. Additionally, volunteer advocates assist victim/survivors at the hospital during a sexual assault exam as well as law enforcement interviews.

Crisis line shifts are nightly from 5 PM to 8 AM as well as weekend and holiday days from 8 AM to 5 PM. Crisis line advocates are able to take the crisis line cell phone home with them and volunteer from their house.

Prevention, Education and Community Outreach Volunteers

Victim Services also offers volunteer opportunities besides victim advocacy. An important part of our work is to provide education for the community and professionals and to offer prevention programs to help end sexual violence. Opportunities include:

Community outreach - helping to make individuals and organizations aware of the services we provide
Training - volunteers can be trained to help provide education about Safe Harbor to community/civic groups
Prevention - opportunities exist with our prevention programs for volunteers to help deliver programming to youth in our area
Conferences - Victim Services recently held the Southeast Regional Safe Harbor Conference and our volunteers were critical for the success of this event
Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM) - volunteers assist with planning events for SAAM and helping out with these events as well

Want to Volunteer or Learn More?

Our Volunteer Advocate Trainings are held twice a year. The first training usually starts in August, and the second training starts in January. This 10 session training is required for Crisis Line Volunteers and strongly encouraged for other volunteers as well. During a training, sessions are usually once a week, but sometimes offered twice a week.

You can also contact our Volunteer Coordinators to learn more:

Neil Dennison - dennison.neil@co.olmsted.mn.us – 507 328-7276

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