Unlikely Heroes
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| Formation | November 11, 2011 |
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| Founder | Erica Greve |
| Legal status | 501(3)(c) Nonprofit Organization |
| Services | Rescue of children, operation of recovery houses, public education |
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President
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Erica Greve |
| Mission | To rescue, restore and rehabilitate child victims of sex slavery. |
| Website | unlikelyheroes |
Unlikely Heroes is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that rescues, restores, and rehabilitates child victims of sex slavery around the world. Since its founding in 2011 by Erica Greve, it has rescued hundreds of children, who are placed in one of their five residential facilities, each offering rescued children housing, safety, food, medical care, education, life skills training, and therapy.
While attending graduate school in the MSW program at UC-Berkeley, Greve interned as an emergency room social worker for a children’s hospital near San Francisco. “It was my job to capture the story of the kids who came through the door,” she explained. One story seemed to repeat itself: young girls being forced into sexual slavery and having no way to get help. Counseling an 11-year-old girl who had been kidnapped and raped by an older man was the catalyst: “There was no place I could find that had the resources necessary to deal with her type of trauma and emotional pain,” Greve said in an interview. "I had to go back to [her] mom and tell her and tell her I couldn't help her, there's nowhere for her to go." At that point Greve decided she had to do something. She decided to find a way to create a safe haven for these kinds of children.
In May 2014, after the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping, Greve was invited to Lagos, Nigeria, to conduct counseling sessions with three children who had escaped Islamic extremist group Boko Haram after being kidnapped with almost 300 other girls from their boarding school, and with 20 of the mothers of kidnapped girls. Greve came to Nigeria at the request of pastor Oladimeji Thompson, founder of the Omoluabi Network, a nonprofit organization working to bring back the schoolgirls. Thompson called Greve “instrumental in providing aid and comfort to the victims of the abductions in Chibok, and to the families of the kidnapped girls.”
Unlikely Heroes is named after all its volunteers, supporters, and employees. Greve considers them heroes because they’re willing to take up the fight. "The name Unlikely Heroes also refers to children who have been and are about to be rescued. Almost all our rescued child victims want to share their stories to help stop the trafficking cycle. To us, these rescued kids are the heroes most of all." Founder & President, Erica Greve, explains the origin & vision further: “The name Unlikely Heroes is about the children we rescue – once they are fully restored – that their voices will become the voices that end human trafficking. But it is also about each and every one of us using our time, our gifts and our resources to do something to stop human trafficking worldwide.”
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Wikipedia