Promoting Empathy for Global Refugees
More people are displaced from their homes today than at any other time in history. The Refugee Journey is an opportunity for church attendees to experience what it is like to be forced from their homes and become refugees. The project gives each person the opportunity to follow the story of Syrian or South Sudanese refugees, promoting empathy and raising funds for impact.
Working with the Evangelical Convenant Church denomination, I created the brand identity, promotional assets, a Giving Tuesday campaign, and event materials for the impactful program’s premiere in 2018. The event made such an impact that the team decided to recreate the experience at CHIC 2024, updating the curriculum to include recent refugee stories from Ukraine.
Services:
Brand Identity Design
Social Media Strategy
Art Direction
Photography
Digital & Print Design
Giving Tuesday Campaign
Event Design
Social Media Management
Telling Important Stories of Displaced People Worldwide
Collaborating with creative director Jane Chao and videographers Eric Staswick and Edgar Torres, my brand identity and design assets were featured in a series of videos that featured stories of real refugees and documented the Refugee Journey experience — facilitated by the ECC’s Serve Globally team — at CHIC 2018. These videos were also shown in ECC churches nationwide, supporting a larger giving campaign. See more videos here.
Among the Evangelical crowd, there’s a stigma against immigrants and refugees. These are people who have often been through significant trauma and deserve safety and support.
Refugee Journey started as an experiential campaign for teen attendees at CHIC Conference to develop empathy by experiencing the stories of South Sudanese and Syrian refugees. The project evolved and became an experience offered to churches to help promote empathy, understading, and giving among their congregations.
I designed a brand identity, print and digital campaign materials, and event materials based on series of compelling graphics from harrowing statistics about displaced people worldwide. My graphics appeared across social media, video, print media, digital campaign, and in-person event assets.
Brand Identity
The brand mark features the universal symbol for aid, a plus sign, rising up from a wave that represents chaos. The shape forms the symbol of a cross. A grounding line beneath the wave represents stability, or life before chaos. The halo represents the calling of the Church to support and care for those who are displaced.
Giving Tuesday
For Giving Tuesday, I created print and digital assets for a multi-channel donation campaign. The church met its goal, raising over $50,000. My social media posts sparked conversation — the post pictured here received the ECC’s highest number of likes, comments, and messages of any post on any platform to that date.
