The teens and young women who signed up for a girls-only summer T-shirt design workshop with 808 Urban expected to learn about graphic design, illustration and craftsmanship. What they didn’t expect were lessons in female empowerment, community and social responsibility.

So they were surprised when in their first week with the Mai‘a Project, they were greeted by speaker Kathy Xian of the Pacific Alliance to Stop Slavery.

What came next was a crash course in the statistics and nature of human slavery and sex trafficking in Hawaii, before the young artists were tasked with designing a shirt that would raise awareness of an issue most would prefer to ignore. Rather than dwelling on the negative, the shirt’s message would also need to suggest empowerment and healing.

Twins Christina and Tina Bui, 14, said their mother was shocked by the subject matter and wanted them to quit the class, but after they explained the aims of the program, she allowed them to continue. Far beyond simply learning how to place a pretty or simple design on a T-shirt, they found their voice.

The students’ work will be featured during the Mai‘a Project benefit launch party and fundraiser taking place Saturday at The Refuge, 683 Auahi St. In addition to sales of the student-designed PASS T-shirts, there will be healing dolls created by the students and members of the public who took part in a related community work day Aug. 18 to create merchandise for the fundraiser.

808 URBAN was started by graffiti artist John “Prime” Hina in the 1980s as an urban arts mentoring organization focused on harnessing the energy and talent of young artists for community good and revitalization. Artist, instructor and mentor Sierra Dew found the group was drawing more teen boys than girls, so she helped start the Mai‘a Project in June as a summer program for girls in partnership with PASS.

“I wanted to work with social-justice clients to develop merchandise for them,” she said. “I wanted to show that the process of creating products isn’t limited to commercial interests. There can be a story and education behind it, and you can engage the community as well. It can be collaborative and artistic, and carry a message, not in a commercialized way.”

Dew hopes the T-shirt and event will raise awareness of the approximately 2,400 children in Hawaii who run away from home each year, becoming prime targets for traffickers and pimps.

Dew said that because teen girls are typically targets of predators, the project aims to enlist other teens and young women who can reach out to their peers about the issue.

Initial sessions started with listing words such as “hope,” “healing,” “shine,” “strength” and “individuality” that conveyed their message.

From there, girls drew images and symbols that might be incorporated in the final design, such as chains representing the past, a bird to represent freedom, and a fist for strength.

There wasn’t much fighting over individual designs.

Sarah-Lee Chun, 20, an art student at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., said, “We had the opposite. There was a lot of indecisiveness because we really liked everything.”

Chun said the project opened her eyes to the possibilities of art as a powerful tool for social issues.

“I’m taking that message to college with me, where I’m involved in the Chapman Feminists Club,” she said.

The Bui twins also are eager to help beyond the classroom now that they’re aware of how easy it is for girls their age to be manipulated into entering sexual slavery. They created a video for the project that can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcY7FNCEKvU.