About Us
Our Mission
Designed For Joy provides women in crisis with stability through immediate employment and support, removing the stigma of vulnerability.
Our Inspiration for Creating our Mission
The heart and soul of Designed For Joy comes from inspiration by international friends creating fair trade artisan groups. We've spent years financially and prayerfully supporting international artisans groups. Our first trip to Rwanda introduced us to an artisan group taking 30 women off the streets working in sex trade and kept them off the streets while producing quality products in a safe and faith based work environment. Together with volunteers and financial supporters like you, we have created that same work model here in North Carolina by opening our studio in December of 2017.
Our Values
We aim to have a C.H.A.I.R. available for every woman in crisis who needs a safe and dignified job. Our values are:
Communication - Active listening. Clear concise direction. Complete transparency.
Hospitality - Commitment to personal satisfaction among all served.
Advocacy - Passionate voice for the unheard. Creating social awareness and change.
Inclusive - Recognize human uniqueness and variability and design within it.
Respect - Affirm belonging. Lead with truth, honesty, empathy, and grace.
Vision Statement
We envision a community where every woman has the opportunity to earn a competitive wage through safe and dignified work. DEI Statement Diversity is a core value of Designed For Joy. We want to ensure as an organization we respect and appreciate differences in age, gender, ethnicity, education, physical abilities, race, and religion among individuals. “Strength lies in differences, not similarities” so the importance of trust, equity and respect is essential to the impact of Designed For Joy. We embrace diversity in the women we serve and want to establish a sense of belonging. As part of that vision, we encourage cultural and self-awareness and aim to ensure there is transparency and accountability with our artisans, volunteers and leadership. We want those engaged with Designed For Joy to demonstrate the positive impact diversity has to empower people by respecting and appreciating what makes them different.
A Competitive Wage
For us, a competitive wage means an income that gives women positive choices rather than making desperate decisions when trying to provide food for family, and paying rent.
Who We Help
The women who handcraft our products with us are those living at high risk for sex and labor trafficking and/or food and housing insecurities. We partner with long-running ministries or local NGOs serving women that may be coming out of trafficking, emergency situations, generational poverty, homelessness, rehab, or prison. We believe in a community approach. In this holistic care approach we take the vocational resource component while our professional partners do what they do best. We are a trauma informed workplace.
Our Hope
Our hope is for our artisans to find confidence in themselves, learn to trust community, and to grow in their faith while working with Designed For Joy. Our goal is for participants to leave DFJ with marketable skills and a solid job reference to succeed in the job market.
Statement of Faith
To glorify God and honor Jesus Christ; to share the Truth of God’s Word in a culturally relevant way; and to provide sustainable jobs to community members in lower income areas of the Triangle and to others located overseas.
Local and Global Products
Drawing from our rich history of international mission work and partnerships with creative co-ops abroad, we do feature a few product lines from outside of the US. These product lines support organizations doing similar work to us in empowering women and their economic futures.
You can support our mission by shopping our locally handcrafted products here
Or you can donate to our mission to help women in crisis here