PlainJoe, A Storyland Studio has created all-new brand strategy and interior design concepts for Agape International Missions (AIM), the grand prize recipient of its 2023 Design Intervention Challenge.
AIM rescues, heals, and empowers human trafficking survivors internationally, focusing primarily on assisting individuals in Cambodia and Belize.
“PlainJoe’s strategy team helped us define our organization’s story,” says Clayton Butler, CEO of AIM. “And then their team of artists and interior designers brought that story to life in ways that will bring healing. We couldn’t be more grateful.”
PlainJoe provided AIM with 200 free hours of work in story-driven brand strategy and design. The firm focused on brand messaging and spatial design, creating interior designs that can be adapted to any space in areas where AIM operates. Facilities are established in undisclosed locations.
AIM’s facilities provide counseling, medical care, social work, and education on-site. Survivors find a motherly presence in house “moms” who are there to nurture them as they heal. The recovery program, which averages about two years in length, is specifically designed to bring each survivor out of extreme trauma and help them begin to thrive, simultaneously providing legal assistance for their ongoing court cases.
PlainJoe’s interior design efforts were focused on creating a safe, inviting space where survivors feel comfortable living and healing. The team created designs for living rooms, therapy rooms, bedrooms, and shaded, outdoor lounging spaces that can be applied in any environment, allowing AIM’s team to use and re-use the concepts in a variety of locations. They also heard and honored AIM’s desire to provide outdoor spaces for play, sports, and gardening.
AIM also wanted residents to have the freedom to express themselves and process their experiences and feelings through art. To that end, PlainJoe conceptualized mural walls residents can color, as well as display walls for their artwork.
Along the way, PlainJoe’s team were mindful of the colors and materials they selected. Not only did colors need to be culturally appropriate; materials needed to be easily accessible in AIM’s locations. It was also important to work around materials that already exist in the homes, including bamboo, granite, and marble. The team applied color psychology during the design process, selecting calming, relaxing colors that would help survivors feel more comfortable.
Above all, the team wanted to give AIM practical, attainable designs no matter where they are working in the world.
“We didn’t want to give them something that wasn’t achievable for them,” says Missy Anderson, Project Manager at PlainJoe, who had previously volunteered with the organization. “Their hope is that mission teams and other teams can come and help execute these in their homes, so these girls, women, and house parents can have spaces that feel like home.”
Don and Bridget Brewster founded AIM in 1988. The organization is dedicated to ending child sex slavery.
According to Butler, the Brewsters recognized the severity of Cambodia’s trafficking problem. Although girls were being rescued from traffickers, there were few facilities offering restorative care to help them recover. Butler says the first iteration of their idea was creating a home where survivors could live, but that evolved into a more holistic concept focused on restoration and recovery.
Since AIM’s SWAT team program was founded in 2014, more than 1,700 survivors have been rescued, with more than 600 traffickers arrested. Those arrested have been sentenced to more than a cumulative 1,700 years in prison. Former trafficking survivors participate in the SWAT team’s operations alongside local law enforcement.
The survivors who come to AIM’s program not only recover, but acquire crucial job skills so they can reintegrate into society. AIM’s goal is to equip them to find employment and build lives outside the world of trafficking, sex slavery, and prostitution. But the organization doesn’t stop with their on-site facilities; AIM does transformational work in the survivors’ communities of origin, with the goal of preventing trafficking before it starts.
“AIM is doing crucially important work through its transformative mission,” says Mel McGowan, Chief Creative Officer at PlainJoe. “It was an honor for PlainJoe to serve AIM through a strategic and spatial transformation of its own. Now, AIM’s brand and properties will tell a more cohesive, connected story, wherever they are in the world.”
Learn more about Agape International Missions, including how you can support the organization, at https://aimfree.org/.
PlainJoe: A Storyland Studio is dedicated to serving cause- and faith-based organizations around the world. Learn more about PlainJoe at https://www.plainjoestudios.com/.
