Guest Profile

Dr. Rodney Hammer

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.

 

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?”

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

It starts with my belief that if we can learn to REHOPE, then all things are possible.