BOOK US TO SPEAK
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My wife and I served as missionaries in Asia and Eastern Europe for 18 years and expanded two humanitarian NGOs to meet indigenous needs. While there, I was exposed to the raw realities of human trafficking. I found its vastness, corruption, and demand overwhelming and seemingly impossible to address.
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Simultaneously I wondered why trafficking victims were unable to escape. During a street outreach, my colleague asked a woman forced to sell herself on the street, “Why don’t you just leave?” She responded, “Am I coming home with you? Do you have a safe place for me?”
Dr. Rodney Hammer
Advocate. Founder. Visionary.
With her hopelessness seared in my mind and without a solution, we returned to the states for a much-needed break. During this time, we discovered that human trafficking is a major problem in our own communities. With up to two million people being trafficked in the United States and a lack of long-term solutions and safe homes, we founded REHOPE.
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On a mission to restore survivors, we opened REHOPE Farms, a 17-acre campus offering women long-term housing, therapy, healing and wellness programs, education, and lifelong support. To provide jobs, professional skills training, and reintegration into the community, we launched REHOPE Market & Cafe, a social enterprise of survivor-made products. We also opened REHOPE Youth, a campus for the restoration of victimized children providing trauma treatment, education, family reintegration, and advanced, trauma-informed foster/adoptive services. We have the only facility in the Midwest that accepts boys.
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Being an advocate and a strategic partner in this fight, I catalyzed REHOPE University - Center of Excellence in Counter Human Trafficking, which brings together a centralized network of professionals from legal, medical, psychological, prevention, social services, business, law enforcement, judicial, and legislative arenas.
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I recently stepped into the Executive Producer role and joined forces with three-time Emmy-nominated producer, Craig Martin, to create a docuseries called Knock: Peering Behind the Door of HumanTrafficking. This series is to bring awareness and create change to the growing pandemic in our own backyard.
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It starts with my belief that if we can learn to REHOPE, then all things are possible.
Seen On
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If we can reimagine our hope, then all things are possible.