Community Highlights: Meet Brittany Jacobson of Freedom Paddle Company

Today we’d like to introduce you to Brittany Jacobson. 

Hi Brittany, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Back in 2013, my sister-in-law and I attended a conference on human trafficking. It was the first time I had ever heard about this issue of exploitation in our country, and I was greatly moved by what we heard. We met a woman at that conference who was going into strip clubs in Grand Rapids, MI, providing support for dancers who had experienced some form of trafficking or exploitation within the sex industry, and she invited us to join her on Tuesday nights. 

Long story short, we did – and when that organization fizzled in 2015, our team looked around at each other and realized we had two options: we could abandon the work we’d started, or we could pick up where this organization left off. Ultimately, we knew the work wasn’t complete and picked up where they left off. Subsequently, we expanded into two other cities across Michigan, as well. We started including illicit massage parlors to our outreach, and street outreach, providing holistic resources to women who had experienced some form of sexual assault. 

During all of this, we would host outdoor excursions and beach days for the women we met on outreach. They’d bring their families, and we’d go on hikes, kayaking adventures, or simply enjoy a beach together for a few hours. It gave us an opportunity to connect on a deeper level, without the pressure of bright lights and loud music. It allowed us to get to the root causes of exploitation in their lives. 

From there, realizing that the outdoors have such an incredible healing power, we started Freedom Paddle Company – a mobile social enterprise providing paddleboard, kayak, and snowshoe rentals. All purchases through our organization fund our outreach efforts. Recently, we started hosting summit and paddle excursions in beautiful National Parks across the country on luxury travel adventures for the general public. By traveling with us, women provide a scholarship to a summit excursion for survivors of human trafficking and sexual exploitation. 

We partner with safehouses across the country who are providing 6–12-month holistic care programs, and we take the women who have completed the program on a summit excursion of some kind. We are the last stop on their journey; the physical culmination of the mental, spiritual and emotional “mountains” they’ve been climbing in their respective programs. We get to pamper them for a weekend, pour into them, and accomplish something big together as a group. It is an incredible time of growth for all of us, and we’re so humbled to be able to put these on at no cost to the women we serve because of our luxury excursions. 

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
This road has been far from easy, but it has been incredibly rewarding. Because we operate as a social enterprise, we truly rely on the public’s support to provide these big summit excursions and holistic wellness retreats for survivors of human trafficking. We don’t get to do this important work if we don’t have the public behind us. But I think that’s been one of the coolest parts of this adventure. We’re not a nonprofit, we’re a for-profit business, and we’ve watched time and time again how the community has come around the women we serve in such tangible ways. 

Each woman who join us on our luxury excursions writes a personal note of encouragement to the woman she sponsors. Our paddleboard groups cover a scholarship, as well, and they get to pack welcome bags for our summit excursions with their own notes of encouragement. 

Trying to change the trajectory of a woman’s life through holistic healing is not easy, and she has to want that change in her life. And sometimes, women go through programming only to go back to the sex industry, or their abusers. It’s heartbreaking to watch this cycle after we’ve become close friends with these ladies. But if we have accomplished anything, I think we’ve proven over the last several years that while this work is hard, we can certainly have fun and enjoy beautiful creation in the process of encouraging and empowering women. We are all in this together, we all have real similarities. It’s not an us and them situation – we’re just women coming alongside women and pointing out the beauty in each one of us. 

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Freedom Paddle Company is a mobile social enterprise, specializing in paddleboard, kayak, and snowshoe rentals in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We also provide adventure travel trips, utilizing the great outdoors as a source of healing for women who have experienced sexual exploitation and/or human trafficking across the country. 

We are proud of our model because it’s unique. We have very little competition because there aren’t very many organizations who have connected paddleboard rentals to the fight against human trafficking. But, because we’re so unique and cater to a niche market, we’re able to really engage with our audience and open people up to the idea of using the outdoors as a healing mechanism. We absolutely love connecting with safe houses, offering a totally free program. That is so empowering for us, knowing we can support them in a new way while deeply caring for the women we meet on our summit excursions. 

We would love readers to know how they can get involved with our organization. We provide paddleboard, kayak, and snowshoe rentals across West Michigan for individuals, groups, and businesses, and we are open year-round. We have two adventure travel trips coming up, as well. We are summiting Mt. Rundle in Banff National Park, July 6-12, 2022, while exploring the beauty of the Canadian Rockies. We’re also heading to Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine, September 22-28, 2022 to summit Cadillac Mountain – the highest peak on the East Coast shoreline. We’ll be whale watching, kayaking, and hiking other trail systems within the park, as well, at the height of fall color season. These are both women’s retreats and we’d love to have readers join us for these! More information and entire itineraries can be found on our website at www.freedompaddlecompany.com/travel-with-us 

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
We’re so grateful for them! We are so honored to be able to join in the fight against human trafficking and be part of the restoration process for survivors and we couldn’t do it without them. 

Pricing:

• Full-Day Paddle Board Rentals – $65
• Acadia National Park Trip – $2,250 (deposit is $450, rest doesn’t need to be paid till August 2022)
• Banff National Park Trip – $2,650 (deposit is $500, rest doesn’t need to be paid until May 2022)
• Full-Day Snowshoe Rentals – $35
• Full-Day Kayak Rentals – $75

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: www.freedompaddlecompany.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/freedompaddleco
• Facebook: facebook.com/freedompaddleco

Image Credits
Brittany Jacobson