How to Become a Victim's Advocate - 5 Steps into the Field

First of all, what is a victim’s advocate? According to victimsofcrime.org a victims advocate is someone who “…supports victims of crime”. They help individuals displaced from trafficking or other crimes or disasters figure out how to maneuver their new environment, showing them methods of working with the government, police, and medical professionals so that they can feel comfortable reaching out to meet their inevitable needs. An advocate might help someone who doesn’t speak the local language or is discriminated against to go shopping, visit the doctor’s office or find a lawyer as the case may be. An Advocate may drive someone around a new city, be a voice for someone that has had trouble knowing how to deal with the law or provide resources to individuals needing care and treatment. Simply speaking, an advocate is someone who makes sure that a victim of a crime is treated right by all parties and in all areas of their lives until they are able to get through treatment or trial and back on their feet again. They are like an anchor in the storm. If this sounds like something interesting to you here are 5 steps to becoming a victims advocate:

1.Know who, what, where and why

This is the key step and you really shouldn’t venter into the next step until you have this one on lockdown, however if advocating is your dream you may already have a basic idea of what you want to do and only need to specify it out loud to yourself.

What I mean by who, what, where and why is that you need to know what population you are trying to target with your advocacy work, what you want to help them with, where their obstacles to getting help lie and why you want to help them specifically.

The most important of these is knowing why you want to help them, because if you don’t have a strong compassion and a long term goal with this you will get run down by the stress of working with people who have gone through so much hardship. You can’t go into this type of field just because you want to help people. You need to go into this knowing as much as possible and having a purpose beyond your personal motivation and drive, because hearing their stories and immersing yourself in their lives will eventually exhaust your personal abilities. It has to be more than you and more than there situation. For me it is that I know God wants women to see themselves and beautiful and strong and human trafficking destroys that in them. My goal is to restore that and with that comes a desire to end human trafficking, but that cannot be my goal as I am not big enough alone. Because my goal is to help people see themselves the way God sees them, even helping only one person reaches my goal and that keeps me encouraged.

After you know why you want to become an advocate you need to invest the necessary time and energy into learning about your population of interest and the issues that surround them beyond the specific thing that you hope to help them with – for example immigrants or refugees don’t just need help with language barriers, they also need help learning our social cues and understanding the way our culture is run, if you can provide them with more than one of their needs you will become an all-around better advocate in their cause.

2.Find an educational program that will fit your goals and needs to get you certified

For example I want to counsel and aid women and girls that have been involved in human trafficking – specifically sex trafficking in New Mexico. These women need someone who can help with addictions, fear, sexual trauma and detrimental health concerns, not to mention someone that can help them work with the legal system if they come to me charged with prostitution crimes for which they were really victims. For me this requires pursuing a bachelor’s degree in women’s studies and psychology so that I could go on to a social work program for my master’s degree and be legally able to counsel and advocate for them. This also required me to focus on classes during my continuing schooling that touch on issues of trauma, minority, sexuality, recovery and my ability to speak both Spanish and English fluently.

Figure out what you really want to do to create change and then take the time to learn not only how to do it, but to figure out the best possible ways you could learn it.

This means focusing carefully on what classes you do and do not take and being sure that you really learn the material. It means you need to clearly see where you are trying to go and get into the best programs and the best professors to fit your needs. You don’t want to waste time and energy in classes and on homework that will mean nothing to you in the future. Don’t compromise what you need to accomplish and if there is a class in your focus area – grab it quick. Better yet, if there is a place that focuses on becoming an advocate for your population of interest do your best to get into it as they will be able to put you on the fast track to reaching your goals.

Either while you are working to get certified as an advocate or after you have already done so you need to

3.Join an internship program

This is probably the most fun part of becoming an advocate before you actually get to start the career of your dreams because you get to actually get involved in helping the people you have been taking all these classes to learn about. Finally you will be able to put into actual practice the skills you have been honing over the months of research and lectures and notes and make some real change in someone’s life.

Typically speaking your program (certification or bachelors/masters degree) will have methods of helping you find the right organization to work with, however there are many ways to go about this yourself. It is likely that in your research of your focus areas and through your classes you have networked with a variety of organizations already and joining an internship program with people that you already know or have some connection to is a much better chance that joining somewhere you have never had any contact before. So when you are in school focus on networking with your professors and peers and doing your own research and volunteering outside of class time. This allows you to put a foot in the door to your future and increase your future prevalence in the field.

Remember, your internship might not be for your dream organization, but it will give you valuable skills to get there one day so take every opportunity you can get in your area of advocacy even if it isn’t your #1 choice.

4.Hone your public speaking and interpersonal skills at events and through lobbying for social justice

You can do this by taking classes, attending, networking and speaking at campus events or by joining a social justice group. Not only will all of these things prepare you for the research, lobbying and relationships you will have to build as an advocate after you get certified, but they also look really good on your resume and can connect you to so many opportunities all over the world. Furthermore, doing things like studying local laws and regulations in your field of interest and teaching yourself to speak to the government, law enforcement and other groups about such issues will show you how to raise awareness which is a natural part of advocacy as well.

5.Learn to be gentle with yourself by practicing self-care

This last point may seem like it doesn’t have much to do with how to become an advocate, but I personally think that it is the most important of them all. In the end if you go through all this training and finish your internship and get certified, but you don’t know how to handle the stress and heartache that come along with working with victims of crime you will not last long as an advocate.

There is no way to stop the work from hurting you, so you have to learn to feel pain and let yourself heal before you get in too deep.

You need to have a wealth of knowledge about yourself and be able to sense when exhaustion, fear or pain is sweeping over you. If you can do this ahead of time you can make it through situations that are hard for you by involving yourself in emotional health practices that let your mind rest and take itself off of the traumatic events your clients have experienced. This includes practices such as prayer, meditation, exercise, healthy communication with loved ones and giving yourself plenty of sleep.

If you follow these steps and constantly seek out new individuals and opportunities to help you along your way you will become a valuable, life changing advocate for so many people and the world will be the better for you.

Much Love,

Deanna Leah