Ms. Mandy Mundy has worked at the Network of Victims Assistance (NOVA) for 15 years. Ms. Mundy started at NOVA in the position of School Specialist in 1996, was promoted to Elementary Education Coordinator and in 2002 became the Director of Education and Training.

 

Ms. Mundy has enhanced many of NOVA’s core education programs so they are relevant to today’s students, teachers, and parents. One of Mandy’s first initiatives was to develop an anti-bullying program for elementary school students, as she recognized that bullying can lead to other forms of violence. Today, NOVA is seen as a leader in Bucks County for the anti-bullying program. Also under Ms. Mundy’s guidance a Cyber-Safety and Cyber-Bullying prevention program was created which has led to the development of the Gender Bullying/Relational Aggression program, which looks at ways in which girls bully through gossiping, texting, ostracizing and teasing and how to handle this form of bullying. All of these programs created by Ms. Mundy have been presented at state and national conferences to other victim service and criminal justice professionals. Ms. Mundy also worked with a local writer and artist to develop the No, Go, Tell Book and coloring book which is used by preschool children in abuse prevention programs.

 

Ms. Mundy has helped develop a Conflict Resolution program to assist students to deal with their anger and teach appropriate ways to handle conflict. In 2005, Ms. Mundy created NOVA’s Identity Theft training which has been presented in many communities as well as to law enforcement which focuses on issues victims of ID theft must face. Under Ms. Mundy’s leadership, the NOVA Education Department’s safety and prevention programs are now presented in all 13 school districts in Bucks County providing over 1,700 programs to over 45,000 students, teachers and parents.

 

Also in 2005, Ms. Mundy coordinated the first ever symposium in Bucks County dealing with elder abuse, named the “Neff Symposium” after an elderly man was murdered in a nursing home in Bucks County by a caregiver. This conference attracts more than 250 professionals, mainly from nursing facilities and law enforcement each year.

 

Seeing a growing need for safety programs for children with disabilities, Ms. Mundy wrote a grant to a local foundation, which was funded, to develop a safety prevention program for children with developmental disabilities. This led to the development of a 10 week prevention education curriculum for Children with Autism which includes a research component so that the program could be evidence based.

 

Ms. Mundy has become well-known for developing and providing training on Mandated Reporting for Professionals from a grant she wrote to the Vision of Hope Foundation through the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape (PCAR) based on the 2007 mandated reporting laws. In 2007, Mandy developed a “train-the-trainer” component of the mandated reporting training and presented it to PCAR contractors so it could be replicated in other counties in PA. All of these innovative programs speak to Ms. Mundy’s accomplishments as she seeks not only to make the programs relevant, but also exciting so people will not only hear the message, but carry it with them in their everyday lives.