Life & Work with Rodney Hammer of Harrisonville & Greenwood

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rodney Hammer.

Hi Rodney, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for sharing your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers.
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 weren’t able 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?”

Without a solution and her hopelessness seared in my mind, we returned to the States for a much-needed break. During this time, we discovered that human trafficking is a major problem in our 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, 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 coffee shop also selling trafficking survivor-made products. We also opened REHOPE Youth, a campus for restoring victimized children providing trauma treatment, education, family reintegration, and advanced, trauma-informed foster/adoptive services. In addition to a home for trafficked girls to recover, we have the only facility that accepts boys in the Midwest.

Being an advocate and a strategic partner in this fight, we 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.

Please talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned. Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Definitely not easy or smooth! One example was the impact of Covid. Covid prohibited welcoming new residents, drastically affected revenues, staffing, and budgets were slashed at both campuses, and the cafe closed for several months, though our residential homes barely stayed open. We cut our budget mid-year by over half, and summer and fall of 2020, we had less than one month’s budget in the bank. We instituted an “Innovation and Recovery Plan,” refocusing and tightly prioritizing our budgeted efforts, emphasizing more extensive partnerships, streamlined services, and a significant communications and fundraising campaign explaining our plan, needs, and way forward. God wouldn’t let us die. Instead, God revitalized and grew RH.

Let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
It all began with prayer, research, and networking. God called and directed a small group of people and churches to address the massive gap in long-term residential restoration for survivors of human trafficking.

Proverbs 24:1-14 became a pivotal scriptural foundation for what was then named Restoration House of Greater Kansas City. These scriptures outline the centrality of needing God’s wisdom to guide you, the importance of partnering with and learning from others, and the urgency and importance of rescuing those being led to slaughter.

(2015) We began in a small farmhouse to help with metro kc area adult residential survivor needs. We had 5 beds in 3 bedrooms, a paid director, and largely volunteer staff with 3 founding Board members Gregg Boll, Dennis Roth, and myself. Our funding was mostly from private individuals and churches, with some revenue generated by small grants and a gala.

(2018) A small experimental social enterprise (“ReHope Market”) selling gently used clothes online morphed into REHOPE Market & Cafe (2019/2020) selling survivor-made products in a coffee shop and pop-up settings.

(2019) We added the minors home for girls, more staff, and the Harrisonville area church facility (RH Farms). We were still primarily metro KC focused but with some survivors outside the KC bi-state area. We lengthened our programs to be more effective, involving three phases and a trauma-informed, empowerment-oriented curriculum. RH Farms enabled more programming and expanded housing possibilities for adults to 6 beds. Minors’ capacity remained constant at 7.

(2021) We grew to be part of multiple national referral networks as well as continued as a regional resource for long-term restorative care for adults and minors, grown to 18 beds for adult women and, depending on staffing levels, up to 7 girls and 7 boys in separate homes in partnership with the Missouri Baptist Children’s Home.

We established a nascent REHOPE University (virtual) with subject matter expert partners. Trauma therapy advancements were facilitated by staff and outsourced counselors and therapists. We contracted for a series of development, marketing, and organizational leadership consultants resulting in significantly improved branding, clearer messaging, better communications, and enhanced fundraising with significant financial ROI results. In 2022 these efforts culminated in rebranding from Restoration House to REHOPE.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.rehope.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rehopeorg/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rehopeorg
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rehope/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/REHOPEorg
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@rehopeorg