Upon opening an activity-based training center to help her daughter regain her ability to walk, Jacqueline Arlen quickly realized the needs for people living with mobility disabilities starts at home and solutions were limited.
Having traveled their own medically complex journey and seeing the disparities of support for people with mobility disabilities, Jacqueline and her daughter Victoria knew they wanted to help create solutions and provide the manual that did not exist.
Empowering Lives: The Journey of Victoria's Victory Foundation
In 2017 Victoria’s Victory Foundation was born from the vision of a mother and daughter and the help of their newly appointed Executive Director. A board of directors comprised of friends and family that had traveled the health journey at various stages joined the team as volunteers to help launch Victoria’s Victory Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to helping those living with mobility disabilities.
While Victoria Arlen was taking the stage on the 25th season of Dancing with the Stars, the funds were being raised and the foundation to build a Victory Scholarship program and to raise awareness for an underserved, overlooked population was being built. Aligning with other non-profits dedicated to improving the lives of those living with mobility disabilities, momentum and supporters grew as did the clear vision of how VVF wanted to serve.
The Victory Scholarship program took shape to provide four areas of funding:
home and vehicle modifications
activity-based training
care giver hours
mobility equipment.
So many organizations were already doing an amazing job keeping individuals active with adaptive sports, VVF chose to focus on the everyday needs to empower people to live more independent lives.
The first Victory Scholarship was awarded in the summer of 2018 and from there the momentum grew. Over the years the board attracted more individuals with their own lived experiences and the mission continued to grow. The VVF team grew bringing on an operations manager to help streamline the application process and create programs to meet the needs of community.
As VVF continued to grant more Victory Scholarships across the country and welcome more individuals into the VVF community, the team quickly realized another area of service that was needed was a resource navigator. Helping individuals navigate the insurance and Medicaid system and receive personalized guidance for support based on their injury, diagnosis, age and state they live in became the focus of the resource navigation program. This was also an opportunity to turn a Victory Scholarship recipient living with a spinal cord injury into a member of the VVF team.
VVF is funded through corporate sponsorships, foundation giving, donor advised funds, planned giving and individual donors. As the need for support in the community grows, the VVF team has grown to include a development manager to help secure more funding to allow us to help more people.
