CVAC’s volunteers help us to provide compassionate support and education, enhancing the community’s ability to prevent and respond to victims of crime.

  1. Become trained to answer our 24-hr crisis line from your own phone, & from any quiet location of your choosing.
  2. Respond to local area hospitals on an on-call basis to serve victims as a medical advocate.
  3. Provide assistance with office administration, IT, social media, or fundraising as a student intern or volunteer.

*CVAC training is a 40 hour mix of online & in-person modules. This training is a certification course through the NYS Department of Health, and is required for all volunteer roles involving survivors of crime.

Volunteer FAQ

The role of the crisis line volunteer is to provide support and assistance to victims via the 24-hour agency crisis hotline. This includes listening, making appropriate referrals, providing crisis intervention, and dispatching victim advocates, while maintaining the highest levels of confidentiality.

​The role of the volunteer advocate is to provide support and assistance to victims as they move through the legal and/or medical process. Advocates respond to requests that are made by hospital staff and local police via the crisis line.

Yes, CVAC needs help in the areas of fundraising, IT assistance and board development. If you are interested in organizing a fundraiser, volunteering to assist our tech needs or wish to apply to become a board member, please e-mail us today.

​All interested crisis line volunteers must be 18 years of age or older. The certification course provides 40 training hours. After the training is complete (and a 6 month probationary period) you will be a certified N.Y.S. Rape Crisis Counselor. In order to maintain this certification you will need to complete 10 hours of ongoing training annually through webinars, in-services, books and videos. Opportunities will be provided but completion and reporting of the 10 hours is the responsibility of the volunteer.

The initial training is 40 hours, half of which will be completed at home by the volunteer (online courses, videos, links), and the other half will be completed here at CVAC (Binghamton, NY) over 4 days (2 Tuesday evenings, 1 Thursday evening, and 1 Saturday)

You do not need a car/transportation to volunteer on the crisis line. You will however, need a car/transportation to attend the initial 40 hour training here at CVAC and to become a volunteer advocate. Volunteer advocates need transportation to and from the hospital.

No! Once trained, volunteers answer the crisis line from their own home (the initial training is located here at CVAC). Advocates are “on call” and will be called on their home or cell phone if an advocate is needed at the hospital/police station. Crisis line volunteers receive crisis calls on their personal phone as well.​

Yes. HOWEVER, we waive the fee of $300.00 if the volunteer is willing to commit to a year of service.

No, you do not need to be a resident of Broome County to volunteer, although you will need to have a basic understanding of Broome County resources, as well as the ability to travel to Broome throughout the training period.

Funding for our volunteer program is provided by the N.Y.S. Office of Victim Services and the N.Y.S. Department of Health.

We generally accept a number of interns throughout the year. To find out if we are currently taking intern applications, follow this link to our Internship Page.