Joyful Heart Foundation

About Joyful Heart Foundation

The Joyful Heart Foundation is a national organization with a mission to transform society’s response to sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse by working to build a world that prioritizes survivors’ healing.

Since 2004, we have carried out this mission through programming designed to center survivors’ needs and fill gaps in the system where those needs aren’t being met. In order to meet evolving challenges and build a culture based in hope and healing, we focus on three key areas: policy and advocacy, healing resources, and awareness and community building. Joyful Heart leads powerful policy reform initiatives—most notably our End the Backlog campaign, which advocates for state and federal legislation to ensure the testing of hundreds of thousands of previously unexamined sexual assault kits across the United States.

lIse Knecht has 28 years invested in victim advocacy and is a nationally recognized expert on the rape kit backlog. She leads Joyful Heart’s End The Backlog campaign, which is at the forefront of identifying untested rape kits across the country, appealing for laws and policies to improve criminal justice responses to sexual violence, and working with jurisdictions to assist them in developing and implementing survivor-centered reforms. She is now leading Joyful Heart’s project on lawfully owed DNA.