Connecting Survivors to Justice and Healing: A DC Bar Foundation Grantee Partner Spotlight

When someone survives a crime, the path forward can be complicated. Legal systems, emotional healing, and practical needs often collide, leaving survivors to navigate multiple systems at once.

One DC Bar Foundation grantee partner is working to change that experience. Volare provides trauma-informed legal services, advocacy, and therapeutic support while also pushing for broader policy reforms that strengthen how communities respond to harm. Last year, they received the Community Human Rights Award from the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area for their extensive work. In this Q&A, Volare CEO and Co-Founder Bridgette Strumpf discusses the organization’s holistic approach and how connection, collaboration, and survivor leadership shape their work.  

Volare says, “the antidote to trauma is connection.” How does that belief shape your work?

After harm, a natural trauma response is disconnection—pulling away from people and systems that no longer feel safe or trustworthy. At Volare, we recognize that instinct while also understanding that healing is often supported through connection with community, care, and trusted support. Our survivor-defined justice approach centers the belief that individuals harmed by crime remain the experts of their own lives and what outcomes will be safe and helpful to them. This lens guides our policy advocacy by centering survivor voices to identify gaps in the law and advance reforms that support restorative, trauma-informed ecosystems.

How do survivors help shape the programs and services that Volare provides?

At Volare, survivor and community voice function as shared leadership, not consultation. Our Survivor Advocacy Council—composed entirely of individuals who have received services at Volare—helps guide decisions on service accessibility, website messaging, and identifying gaps and needs in programming and policy. We also use community surveys to reach a broader network of individuals who have experienced harm from crime, helping us understand how survivors define safety, justice, and healing before investing in new programs or advocacy priorities. For example, this current community survey informs restorative justice options and related advocacy.

What does it look like when attorneys, therapists, and advocates work together to support a survivor at Volare?  

Our wraparound model brings attorneys, advocates, and therapists into close collaboration, with the survivor guiding every decision. Research on trauma-informed, coordinated care shows that survivors are more likely to seek help when support is relational, consistent, and grounded in trust. At Volare, each team member reinforces that trust—legal advocacy is informed by emotional safety; therapy extends understanding of survivors’ identities, lived experiences, and cultural context; and advocacy addresses practical barriers. Survivors are supported through an integrated, survivor-centered approach rather than being passed between systems. This chain of trust reduces re-traumatization and barriers to care, helping prevent the long-term human and social costs of unaddressed trauma.

Where do you see the biggest gaps in how systems support survivors today, and what is Volare doing to help close them?

Research shows that communities facing chronic underinvestment, adverse childhood experiences, and unaddressed trauma face higher risks of both experiencing and perpetuating harm, yet our systems remain largely reactive. One of the greatest obstacles to change is the failure to address these root causes upstream. Volare works to support community-led solutions by shifting understanding through trauma education initiatives and our TraumaTies podcast, both of which center trauma literacy. At the same time, we work on the ground to increase access to actionable support by leading innovative restorative justice services and systems, such as the Victim Legal Network of DC—a first-of-its-kind model that uses interoperable technology and trusted relationships to connect survivors to coordinated legal services. Together, this approach transforms awareness into action by pairing cultural change with real pathways to safety and justice.

What still needs to change to advance your mission, and how are you tackling that?  

Over the next year, Volare’s strategic priorities focus on strengthening systems that protect safety, credibility, and access to justice. We are deepening our Title IX work in response to the high number of students in DC and nationwide affected by sexual violence, particularly in vulnerable communities where failures in educational protections have far-reaching impacts. Alongside this, we are advancing a National Jury Education Initiative to improve public understanding of trauma, memory, and credibility and to support more equitable justice outcomes.

With equal intention, Volare is prioritizing the programmatic and individual resilience of the people doing this work—because lasting systems change requires teams that are supported, connected, and able to sustain this work with care, clarity, and long-term impact.