Leaving Human Trafficking Is Only the Beginning. Rethreaded Is There for What Comes Next.

What does freedom look like the morning after you escape?

Where do you live?

How do you get to work without a driver’s license?

How do you find that job with a criminal record?

How do you learn to trust people again?

And after years of being told that your choices, your body, and your future belonged to someone else — how do you begin believing they belong to you?

This is the part of human trafficking we don’t talk about nearly enough.

Leaving is an extraordinary act of courage. But leaving is only the beginning.

In Jacksonville, Rethreaded has spent the last 15 years working in everything that comes after. Fifteen years ago, founder and CEO Kristin Keen returned to the United States after starting a company for survivors of human trafficking in Kolkata, India. Within one week of arriving back in Jacksonville, she met a survivor.

Trafficking wasn’t something happening somewhere far away.

It was happening here. In our city.

Kristin started Rethreaded with a few upcycled T-shirts, three survivors, no air conditioning, and a belief that women who had survived exploitation deserved more than a way out.

They deserved a way forward.

What Happens After?

A survivor may leave trafficking and simultaneously face more than 70 barriers to rebuilding her life.

No driver’s license. A criminal record. Unsafe housing. Addiction. Severe and complex trauma. Difficulty finding stable employment. And the countless practical and emotional consequences of exploitation that don’t disappear simply because someone has left it.

According to Rethreaded, without stable employment, 80% of survivors are likely to return to trafficking.

That is the gap Rethreaded exists to fill.

Through its 3–5-year Survivor Development Program, survivors receive long-term employment alongside care management, therapy, group therapy, professional development, skills training, and something equally difficult to quantify: time and a safe place to heal.

The goal isn’t simply employment. It’s what Rethreaded calls complete restoration — helping survivors reclaim choice, reduce the vulnerabilities that made exploitation possible, discover their purpose, and begin breaking cycles of generational trauma.

“Rethreaded opened up so many opportunities for me. I learned to use my voice. I can say, I’m afraid, and have a community walk beside me that says, ‘We go with you.’”

Those four words may explain Rethreaded better than any program description could:

We go with you.

Three to five years is a long time. But healing doesn’t follow a campaign calendar. Rebuilding trust doesn’t happen on a deadline. Neither does sobriety, financial stability, education, learning new skills, navigating trauma, or discovering who you are when someone else is no longer defining you.

So Rethreaded stays. We go with you.

15 Years. 105+ Survivors. 200,000+ Hours of Employment.

This year, Rethreaded celebrated its 15th anniversary. Over those years, the organization has provided direct services to more than 105 survivors and more than 200,000 hours of employment. But an hour at Rethreaded can represent much more than an hour of work.

Multiply those hours by more than 105 women, and the number begins to mean something very different.

Rethreaded describes itself as a jumping-off point. Its purpose isn’t to keep women inside the program forever. It’s to give them the support, skills, stability, and confidence to boldly move into whatever comes next. And then, sometimes, they come back.

As guests. As volunteers. As permanent staff. At events. Or bringing another survivor to Rethreaded’s campus so she, too, can be connected with support.

Former participants have gone on to become directors, nurses, managers, support specialists, students, homeowners, and professionals building lives of their own choosing. They return reunited with their children. In healthy relationships. Years into sobriety. Working toward degrees. Building careers. Living lives that once may have felt impossible.

“I remembered that I have the capacity for life. Not just enduring but growing and succeeding.”

“I remembered that I can do great things, and I have seen real change in my life.”

The Victories Most People Never See

There are milestones most of us would immediately recognize as success: graduating, getting a promotion, buying a home, starting a new career.

Rethreaded celebrates those. But they also understand victories that are much quieter.

For someone rebuilding after exploitation, these aren’t small victories. They’re pieces of a life being returned to its owner.

Restoration Can Look Like a Handbag. Or a Piece of Toffee.

There is something else unusual about Rethreaded’s model. Employment isn’t adjacent to the mission. Employment is part of the mission. Rethreaded operates an upcycling and toffee business that provides restorative employment for survivors in its development program. Inside its Jacksonville campus, materials that might otherwise be discarded — including T-shirts and leather airline seats — are transformed by survivor artisans into new products.

There’s also an industrial kitchen producing Rethreaded’s locally made toffee. Those products are sold through the organization’s retail store and online, alongside goods from other mission-driven nonprofits.

So when someone buys a gift from Rethreaded, they’re not simply purchasing a product.

They’re helping sustain employment that gives a survivor the time and stability needed to do the much harder work happening alongside it: healing, learning, rebuilding, and choosing what comes next.

Human Trafficking Is Not Someone Else’s Story

Human trafficking can be uncomfortable to talk about. Perhaps even more uncomfortable is acknowledging how close to home it can be. Rethreaded shared that 98% of the women it serves were trafficked in Northeast Florida, and 100% are U.S. citizens.

They are mothers. Sisters. Friends. Neighbors.

Women whose vulnerability may have begun with homelessness, addiction, generational trauma, or something as deeply human as the desire to belong.

Rethreaded asks our community not to look away from that reality.

But it also offers something important alongside it: a tangible way to respond. Because restoration is possible.

“I remembered that I am resilient. I no longer run away, give up, or settle for less.”

These aren’t stories about what trafficking took away. They’re stories about what women are reclaiming.

Half an Hour of Hope

Right now, Rethreaded’s greatest need is consistent funding. That consistency matters because restoration isn’t a short-term process. The Survivor Development Program lasts three to five years, and Rethreaded says it costs $34.33 per hour, per survivor to provide employment and the holistic services surrounding it, including therapy, care management, and professional development.

Their 1717 campaign breaks that enormous need into something much smaller: $17.17 a month. That recurring donation provides half an hour of employment and holistic services for a survivor in the program.

Maybe you can’t solve human trafficking. Most of us can’t. But perhaps that’s the wrong question.

Maybe you can help provide half an hour.

And when enough people choose to provide one half hour, Rethreaded can keep doing something far bigger: staying long enough for a survivor to build a life she chooses for herself.

Half an hour becomes a day. A day becomes a week. Weeks become months. Months become years.

And those years can become a life in which a survivor has choice again, vulnerabilities have been reduced, and the cycle of trauma can begin to change for her children, too.

Rethreaded calls it Half an Hour of Hope.

There Are Other Ways to Step In

For Jacksonville businesses, Rethreaded also offers a particularly hands-on way to understand the mission.

Corporate groups of 10 or more can volunteer on the organization’s Springfield campus. Teams receive a campus tour, learn about human trafficking, and help deconstruct leather airline seats — the same material survivor artisans later transform into upcycled products.

Businesses can also support restorative employment through Gifts of Hope, Rethreaded’s customizable corporate gifting program. Through the end of August, the organization is offering an early-bird discount for companies ordering year-end gifts.

And anyone can walk into Rethreaded’s retail store or shop online.

Sometimes supporting a mission can begin with simply choosing where you buy your next gift.

Why We Chose This Organization

At JAX Business Calendar, we believe strong communities are built by what happens when people decide that someone else’s challenge matters to them, too.

Rethreaded’s story asks Jacksonville to look at human trafficking differently.

Not only at rescue. Not only at escape. But at everything that comes afterward.

The job. The therapy appointment. The hard day at work. The first boundary. The driver’s license. The new skill. The degree. The home. The relationship rebuilt. The child who grows up seeing a different future.

Rethreaded isn’t asking survivors simply to start over. It’s giving them the time, employment, community, and support to build forward.

And after 15 years, some of the most powerful evidence of that work is walking back through their doors.

The Ask: Half an Hour Can Be a Beginning

Rethreaded’s greatest need right now is consistent, recurring funding that can sustain survivors throughout a restoration process that takes years, not weeks.

Through the 1717 campaign, a recurring gift of $17.17 per month provides approximately 30 minutes of employment and holistic services for a survivor.

But financial support isn’t the only way to stand beside the mission.

For businesses and individuals wondering where to begin, Rethreaded has an even simpler invitation:

Connect With Rethreaded

Rethreaded
515 E. 9th St.
Jacksonville, FL 32206
Springfield, just outside Downtown Jacksonville

Website: www.rethreaded.com
General Email: info@rethreaded.com
Phone: 904-438-8109

To schedule a tour or discuss getting involved:

LinkedIn: Rethreaded, Inc.  |  Facebook: Rethreaded  |  Instagram: @rethreadedinc  |  YouTube: Rethreaded  |  1717 Campaign: support.rethreaded.com/1717

Community Spotlight

Community Spotlight is a JAX Business Calendar storytelling series dedicated to introducing our community to the nonprofits, startups, and community builders strengthening Northeast Florida every day.

Our hope is simple: that someone who reads a story becomes the next volunteer, donor, sponsor, community partner, advocate — or simply the person who helps someone else discover an organization they didn’t know existed.

Because sometimes the right connection doesn’t begin at a networking event. Sometimes it begins by deciding that someone shouldn’t have to walk the hard road alone.