Michelle Stafford is engaging, clear-eyed and happy.
Most importantly, she’s sober. Clean of the drugs and alcohol that once controlled her mind and nearly took her life.
She’s living independently for the first time in her 51 years.
Stafford has her own place, no longer having to huddle on the porch of an abandoned house.
And she has a job, tailor-made for women who are survivors of the sex trade.
Stafford spent years on Philips Highway, selling herself to survive.
Now, she makes Grace scarves for Rethreaded, a nonprofit dedicated to employing women like Stafford as they begin new lives.
Rethreaded is celebrating its fourth anniversary Saturday, a venture born out of founder Kristin Keen’s conviction to make sure women know their worth and their value.
It was a journey that included Keen working several years in a red-light district in India, hearing the stories of thousands of women who felt they had no other choice.
Life-changing view in India
Keen had “some stuff happen” dealing with sex in late high school and early college. She didn’t share details, but was clear it set her on her life’s path.
“I never wanted another woman to feel like this again,” Keen said. “I never want a woman to feel like that’s all she has to offer.”
That started her journey.
Keen graduated from the University of Florida, where she majored in nutrition. Almost immediately, she told herself, “I don’t want to do this.”
Instead, she took an unpaid internship in campus ministry in Augusta, Ga., to reach out to college students. Then she worked at the Wesley Foundation of the United Methodist Church for two years.
An opportunity came up for Keen to spend four months in Kolkata, India, working with a group that serves vulnerable people around the world.
“I said, ‘I’ll go and do this India thing for four months,’” Keen said, then go to grad school.
While in India, she saw the 10,000 females working the red-light district, believing the sex trade was their only choice. Not realizing their worth and value was greater. Thirty percent were under age.
Those four months were life-changing. She couldn’t believe that level of evil existed.
“I had my world rocked on all levels,” Keen said. “Rocked.”
After nine months back home, she returned to India. She never made it to grad school.
Coping with emotions
In India, Keen and a friend co-founded Sari Bari, which gave jobs to women who found the strength to leave their lives in the red-light district behind.
It started with three women who were hired to sew blankets. Sari Bari now employs more than 100 women.
Gaining the trust of women was difficult. Convincing one to leave the streets wasn’t enough because no woman ever left alone. She always had to have a friend for support.
Two of three original women are still with Sari Bari. The third “hit some rough spots” and never learned to fully trust, Keen said. The woman left the company but Keen doesn’t know if she went back to the red-light district.
Keen was part of the training team for Sara Bari. She taught the women everything from math to how to dance the twist.
That one day a week training the women at Sari Bari’s office gave her enough hope to spend the other work days in the red-light district.
Her mother visited Keen in India near the end of her five years there. “You’re just so angry,” she told her daughter.
Keen knew it was true. “Kolkata was a hard city. A hard city to be a woman in,” she said.
But leaving didn’t come easy. It took about nine months for Keen to make the decision to return to the United States in 2008.
It came after friends prayed over her, saying she had been in a winter phase of her life.
“God wants you to move to a spring,” they told her. “You can go and it’s OK.”
But the guilt followed her to Jacksonville, where friends of hers lived in Avondale. For two weeks, she talked with counselors trained in helping people adjust back to life from overseas.
She knew she had a lot of emotions locked inside that she’d never dealt with. And she kept it all locked up until those counseling sessions. Then, the emotions poured out.
There was relief, which felt good. But there also was guilt because she left the women.
“I knew their names,” she said, her voice trailing off. “And I left.”
Realizing a possibility
The Clearwater native put her college degree to use when she got a job as a dietitian. But she still wanted to help women in need.
She started volunteering with Grace Ministry of Helping Hands, reaching out to the women working as prostitutes along Philips Highway.
As she got to know the women, she realized their lives mirrored those of the women in India.
“It was the same thing,” she said. “It’s a whole industry built on the exploitation of people and their vulnerabilities.”
Keen began to work on becoming a distributor for Sari Bari, spreading the word through home parties.
Then came some divine intervention. A friend sent out an email saying she was looking for a part-time nanny. Keen jokingly said she could do that and develop Sari Bari on the side.
Two weeks later, it wasn’t a joke anymore.
“I said, ‘no, I could really be your nanny,’” Keen said.
In that year, she founded Rethreaded, which makes items from recycled T-shirts, hiring survivors of the sex trade in Jacksonville.
The nonprofit was originally named “Spring,” after the prayer her friends in India said for her.
A ‘crazy idea’ that worked
In 2012, Keen left her nanny job and went full-time with Rethreaded.
The owner of Load King donated warehouse space on Barnett Street, as well as picking up the cost of utilities.
They hoped for 200 people to attend their opening day ceremony; 500 showed up.
Then came the inaugural One Spark crowdfunding festival in 2013. She wasn’t sure what the event was, but when she saw Rethreaded could win $25,000, she was in. That was enough to fund the nonprofit’s job training program for four women.
They built a 20-foot tall house out of 300 tie-dyed T-shirts. “I have these crazy ideas and this one worked,” she laughed.
Everyone rallied for the nonprofit, Keen said.
“It was actually one of the most magical experiences of my life,” she said.
Since then, Rethreaded has continued to grow. Its latest venture is a sports team line, with scarves, wrap-around bracelets and other items made in team colors.
So far, they have products for the Jacksonville Jaguars, Florida State University, the University of Florida, the University of North Florida, the University of Central Florida and the University of Georgia.
Rethreaded has helped 18 women with jobs once they made the decision to leave their destructive lives behind and start fresh.
Keen is proud of that, but she’s also focused on the many women who are ready to work but Rethreaded doesn’t have enough work to hire them.
“That’s why I won’t stop,” she said.
Stafford spent two years at City Rescue Mission before being hired at Rethreaded about a year ago. She loves making the Grace scarves and smiles as she talks about seeing people wear them in public.
The turnaround for her has been incredible. Going from a life that was so hopeless that Stafford tried to end it three times to living a life where she has hope again.
For her that hope comes in a job where she sews like her late mother did when Stafford was growing up and a life she’s sure her mother would be proud she built.
@editormarilyn
(904) 356-2466
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Celebrating this Saturday
Rethreaded, the 2013 winner of One Spark, is having a fourth anniversary party from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday at its retail store at 820 Barnett St.
This family-friendly event will feature live music from local bands, Conscious Eats and Bold City Brewery food and drink, games and activities for kids and a raffle for Rethreaded products.
Molly Curry, wife of Mayor Lenny Curry, will make a speech at the event.
For more information on Rethreaded, visit rethreaded.com.