Our mission is to help restore lives damaged by incarceration, addictions, and poverty, through employment, job skill training, spiritual guidance, encouragement and hope. We operate multiple businesses to fulfill our social mission. We are a seamless integration of business as mission. We believe that a job is the most fundamental non-spiritual need of a person. With a job comes food, shelter, medicine, and education. Employment brings value and identity. Our mission confronts social problems to reduce poverty, revitalize low income communities, and empower individuals and families to become more fully self-sufficient. Through our businesses we create an environment where impoverished citizens can experience new skills and opportunities that equip them to add value to society, thus transforming receivers into givers. As a faith-based organization we encourage biblical study and discipline as a foundation from which decision-making that enables and sustains transformation can happen.
Our Mantra Is “Hope Works”
”We believe that a job is the most fundamental non-spiritual need of a person. With a job comes food, shelter, medicine, and education. Employment brings value and identity.
Dale SedgwickCEO
Leadership
We’re passionate about what we do and seek every opportunity to exceed expectations of our clients and reinforce the value and potential we see in our employees, trainees and volunteers.
Lives Improved
1200
Successful Јоurneys
60
Employed Individuals
20
Board of Directors
Our History
Hope Initiatives CDC, Incorporated was incorporated in New York State on April 1, 2002 as a Not-For-Profit corporation. The organization benefited from strong leadership and financial support from Bethel Christian Fellowship church. A faith-based organization from its inception, the original intent of the corporation was to function as a community development organization which delivers programs that foster transformational change socially, economically, and spiritually to the Rochester community. These programs included but were not limited to: development, implementation, and promotion of a sexual abstinence before marriage curriculum for youth on an as-invited basis; social work office for general counseling, advocacy and referral services for persons in need or crises; skills training for use of computers, resume writing and job interviewing; tutoring programs, services, and life skills coaching for poverty-stricken inner-city youth; maintenance of a warehouse to provide food and furniture to people in need; and partnering with other agencies in the development or rehabilitation of housing for low to moderate income individuals or families in the Greater Rochester area.
Luis Perez served as the initial Executive Director from 2001 to 2006. John Shoemaker assumed the role from 2006 until 2008 when Bill Daubney was selected to lead the organization. Under Bill’s leadership Hope Initiatives became a stand-alone 501(c)3 organization, and evolved into a profitable charitable social enterprise which operates several businesses including moving and storage, furniture manufacturing, and home rehabilitation. The proceeds from each of these businesses are re-invested into the business and community so that more employment opportunities are created, skills training and coaching can continue, biblical discipleship can remain at our core, and we are free to encourage and offer hope to everyone we serve. Bill Daubney, author of Open Your Hand Wide, retired in August 2016. The tenure of his successor, Tommy Davis, was brief, lasting only 9 months. Bill graciously resumed the role of interim Chief Executive Officer until the search for the current Hope Initiatives CEO, Dale Sedgwick was completed in July 2017.