Meet Olivia Christians of Joyful Heart Foundation + GenerationJOY

Today we’d like to introduce you to Olivia Christians, Chair of the GenerationJOY Dallas Committee.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Olivia. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Giving back and being involved in a cause has always been something extremely important to me. I first began volunteering while still in high school. When I attended college at Southern Methodist University, I volunteered for The Family Place with their afterschool kid’s program and absolutely loved it. I am still involved with The Family Place seasonally as one of Partners Card retail sales liaisons

Upon graduation, I moved to New York City and although my busy work schedule made it difficult to find a volunteer opportunity to give my time, a close friend I met while in New York City later helped change this predicament. My dear friend, Adrianna Bachich, a member of the Joyful Heart Foundation’s GenerationJOY Committee, would later introduce me to Sophia Schrager, Co-Founder of GenerationJOY and now a board member for Joyful Heart.

After moving back to Dallas, I volunteered a few years for a respite program for children with special needs and loved my time with them; however, Joyful Heart focuses on an issue space that has always been important to me. A few years later, when Adrianna offered to introduce me to Sophia and learn more about GenerationJOY, I immediately took the opportunity. I connected right away with Sophia and the staff at Joyful Heart and in May of 2017, I traveled to New York City to attend their yearly gala and witness firsthand the impact of their work.

Once I returned to Dallas, I started speaking with friends and contacts about events and how we could share Joyful Heart’s work with our community. With time, we gained traction and now have a group of eleven individuals on the GenerationJOY Dallas Committee. The Committee has been instrumental in creating our larger events, and I could not have done it without their help. Each Committee member possesses particular strengths and has leveraged those as well as their networks to spread awareness about Joyful Heart and the various events we are hosting in Dallas.

One thing I believe has allowed us to grow as quickly as we have is Sophia and the leadership team at Joyful Heart have been incredibly supportive and given me a great deal of latitude when it comes to planning events. They understand that what resonates in New York City might not resonate in Dallas and empower me to make those decisions and plan events accordingly. Their trust in me is a great responsibility and not one I take lightly.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Overall; yes, it has been a smooth road. Whether someone donated a small amount, attended an event, asked more about our initiatives, or bought a large piece of art at our yearly auction, I have been immensely blown away by people’s generosity. Each and every act of generosity has been seen and is truly appreciated.

One of the most rewarding (and also challenging) aspects of this work is that our GenerationJOY events are fueled by in-kind donations. This means we rely solely on the generosity of individual sponsors and/or businesses. The community and the local business owners here in Dallas have met us with such openness and generosity and without that, we would not be able to share Joyful Heart’s work like we have. Even if a business can’t support one particular event, they have gone above and beyond to thank us for the work we are doing and encouraged us to contact them in the future in order to potentially support whenever possible. I believe it speaks volumes for not only the community here in Dallas, but also for the work Joyful Heart is doing. It is necessary and proves that everyone is affected one way or another by these issues and people want to do their part to help in any way they can.

During these events, I find myself looking out at everyone who has donated their time and resources to come support GenerationJOY and I have found it to be a very humbling experience to see a group of people shows up to support a common cause. I am very grateful to live in a community that wants to come together to support this cause.

We’d love to hear more about your organization.
Joyful Heart was founded in 2004 by actor, director, producer and advocate Mariska Hargitay with the intention of helping survivors heal and reclaim a sense of joy in their lives. Our mission is to transform society’s response to sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse, support survivors’ healing, and end this violence forever. Joyful Heart carries out its mission through an integrated program portfolio of education and advocacy.

Our work is paving the way for innovative approaches to treating trauma; igniting shifts in the way the public views and responds to sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse; and reforming and advancing policies and legislation to ensure access to justice for survivors. GenerationJOY is a Committee within Joyful Heart comprised of next-generation advocates who are committed to using their voices and resources to work towards Joyful Heart’s vision of a world free of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse.

I am first and foremost tremendously proud of the awareness and funds raised to support ending the rape kit backlog while working with GenerationJOY. As a group, GenerationJOY has raised over $115,000 to support Joyful Heart’s work. Since 2010, Joyful Heart has made the elimination of the rape kit backlog a top priority through our End the Backlog initiative (www.endthebacklog.org). Survivors deserve justice—and that is what rape kit reform represents. Joyful Heart has identified more than 225,000 untested rape kits sitting in police, crime lab or other storage facilities across the United States.

And, with approximately 15 states remaining that have yet to count the untested rape kits in their possession, we believe there are several hundred thousand more yet to be discovered. We are implementing a national campaign with the goal of passing comprehensive rape kit reform legislation – which for us includes six different mandates – in all 50 states. Since we launched our national effort, 41 states and Washington, D.C. have passed laws supporting some aspects of the six pillars of reform. Twelve of those states have implemented full rape kit reform and I am proud to say, Texas was the first.

One thing that sets GenerationJOY and Joyful Heart apart from other organizations is our desire to support local organizations instead of competing against them. Last year GenerationJOY Dallas hosted a supply drive for local domestic violence shelter, Genesis Women’s Shelter. Proceeds from this drive went to Annie’s House, their transitional housing program for victims of domestic violence.

Each apartment represents a family’s opportunity to get back on their feet and create a new place to call home. Through our supply drive, we were able to gather enough supplies for roughly three apartments. It is extremely rewarding to work with an organization that sees value in supporting similar organizations in the issue space versus trying to compete.

What were you like growing up?
I deferred to my mom and sisters on this as they can do a better job answering than I can. They unanimously agreed that I was “curious, inventive, generous and always into something.”

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.joyfulheartfoundation.org/generationjoy
• Phone: https://www.facebook.com/joyfulheart

Suggest a story: VoyageDallas is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.