Meet the charity helping forge futures free of exploitation

In the latest edition of Marketing Derby’s Innovate Magazine we meet the people behind Rebuild East Midlands, an organisation that helps survivors of modern slavery and human trafficking build new lives.

Rebuild provides crisis support for those who have recently left exploitation and then long-term assistance to secure housing, address health issues, build confidence and find routes into education and employment.

Innovate meets its chief executive Paul McAnulty and head of support delivery Diane Rogers, who share harrowing stories – and how the charity helps turn around lives.

Paul has spent the last 18 years tackling exploitation in roles with the police, NGOs and major corporations.

He also brings his own ‘lived experience’ to his role with Rebuild East Midlands, as Innovate discovers.

He endured a troubled childhood in which he was exploited and went on to experience homelessness – before turning his life around through the route of education.

One of the phrases he uses when talking to Innovate about Rebuild’s work is  “viable alternatives”. In his own life, education and housing became the alternatives that prevented further harm.

After university, Paul joined Derbyshire Police and eventually served with the East Midlands Serious Organised Crime Unit, where he investigated gang related exploitation.

Later, while working for major retail businesses, he saw what he describes as the “hidden infrastructure” behind supply chains – and the heightened risk of forced labour at pressure points like Christmas.

He told Innovate: “At peak times they need to take on lots of workers. They’re supplied by recruitment firms… the risk is that people are seen as numbers, not human beings.

“When someone pulls up in a minibus with eight of their ‘cousins’ wanting to work, it can raise legitimate questions about recruitment and oversight. But in fast-moving environments, especially at peak times, due diligence can be challenging to apply consistently.

“Often these gaps are not the result of malicious intent, but of pressure, speed and fragmented responsibility. However, those gaps can still be exploited and that’s where stronger systems and shared accountability matter.”

Rebuild East Midlands exists in the middle of those realities: the human reality of those being exploited, the economic reality of how labour is sourced and the system reality of fractured support for those impacted.

Ask Diane about the organisation’s mission and she doesn’t reach for policy terms or programme descriptions.

She told Innovate: “It’s to make sure that no-one has to recover alone.”

To read the feature in full click here.