In 2007, Ms. Hammett
founded a non-profit organization called The Hub, a truly unique program
designed to reach out and minister to the community's most desperate
members. In her own words, this organization was created for the "widow,
the orphan, the hungry, the poor, the exploited and the outcast."
Initially, this ministry, under the name of The Lovewell, focused on the
homeless population, providing them with methods of increasing their
independence in order to better their own situation. In this program,
individuals are encouraged to attend classes and courses designed to
educate in important life skills, in order to gain points, they can then
use to provide for their own needs. These points give them access to
resources like a clothing store, laundromat, food store, and hair salon,
all run by volunteers of the organization.
In 2011, The Hub
branched into a different ministry as well. While the programs for the
homeless and poverty-stricken remained in full force under The Lovewell,
a second avenue of this organization formed to address the needs of a
population generally dismissed, ignored, forgotten, or avoided. This new
subset of The Hub, known as Purchased: Not for Sale, focuses on
providing services for individuals involved in the sex industry.
Purchased ministers to exotic dancers, women who have been involved in
prostitution, adult victims of sex trafficking, and children who have
been victims of trafficking or who are deemed at high risk for being
recruited into this industry.
Purchased: Not for Sale included four different programs: Recovered, Reclaimed, Rejuvenate, and Demand.
Recovered
is a two-year long residential program designed for women who have been
involved in prostitution and want out of that lifestyle. Purchased
provides housing for these women and a series of classes to teach them
essential life skills, as well as classes to help heal from addiction.
Reclaimed
focuses on underage individuals who have been victims of human
trafficking. Purchased has partnered with Department of Children and
Family Services to help train volunteer foster families in specialized
methods to work with child victims of sex trafficking.
Rejuvenate
focuses on teenage girls that are considered high-risk for being
recruited into the sex trafficking industry. Rejuvenate seeks to help
restore and build relationships with the teenage girls and their
families to set up a support structure that might otherwise be lacking.
Demand
focuses on those seeking to fulfill that demand within the sex industry
in conjunction with Clint Davis Counseling services, to educate the
solicitors of the sex industry. First and second time offenders can
attend the program’s “John School,” in an attempt to affect change at
the most basic level: the demand.
The Hub is a non-profit
organization, funded entirely through donations, more than 30 different
churches, and more than 35 community organizations, including Juvenile
Justice, medical doctors, rehab programs, GED programs, food banks,
employment programs, and many others.
In 2014, Ms. Hammett became
the first and only non-government organization member of the FBI New
Orleans, Shreveport Child Exploitation Task Force (CETF). Ms. Hammett
and Purchased: Not for Sale have become invaluable resources to the
efforts of special agents and other Task Force officers working child
exploitation and human trafficking cases in the Shreveport area. Ms.
Hammett and the employees at Purchased are on-call any time the CETF
needs them. Ms. Hammett offers services to any adult women arrested by
FBI or other law enforcement, and at times has been able, through her
love and care of these women, to gain valuable insights and information
that have been beneficial in the execution of the FBI’s human
trafficking investigations.
In addition, Ms. Hammett is always
available to assist in whatever capacity when a juvenile victim is
recovered. At times this has meant helping to find housing, and at times
it has meant bringing food to the child victim and sitting with her and
law enforcement all night because housing could not be found. Ms.
Hammett has even provided trial testimony in a case involving the
trafficking of a 14-year-old girl, the result of which saw the pimp
receive a 50-year federal prison sentence in 2019.
Ms. Hammett is
a visionary; she has seen the problem and has chosen to not only combat
it, but to make every effort to prevent it and to offer assistance in
recovery from it. This is true of both her endeavors through The
Lovewell and through Purchased: Not for Sale. She has established an
oasis in a community where poverty and prostitution are rampant. But
she’s not content to stop there. Ms. Hammett’s program is invaluable in
the effort to combat the sex industry in the Shreveport/Bossier City
area, but the sex industry is everywhere. To this end, Ms. Hammett has
developed a template for her program for other cities in other states
that might want to fight this problem. Already, she has helped launch a
Purchased program in Las Vegas, Nevada, including facilitating a
discussion between the organizers of that program and special agents of
the Shreveport Resident Agency in order to help develop a plan for the
Las Vegas program to effectively work with law enforcement in their
area. Ms. Hammett is not only a resource to this community, but to every
community that has or will follow in her footsteps.
On Friday
October 2, 2020, FBI New Orleans Special Agent in Charge Bryan Vorndran,
Supervisory Special Resident Agent Chris Plants, and Community Outreach
Specialist Lori Chauvin will formally present Ms. Hammett with the 2019
Director’s Community Leadership Award for her tremendous efforts with
the homeless and sex industry communities.
Posts
