Ten Shekel Shirt will perform at the concert, which will benefit a nonprofit founded by lead singer Lamont Hiebert, second from left.Lancaster Online
Feb 01, 2009
Concert Friday at LBC is fundraiser in fight to end child slavery
By Helen Colwell Adams, Staff Writer
After her first trip to Cambodia, Michelle Kime had to ask herself a question: "How do I live here now?"
She had seen grinding poverty, poor sanitation, filthy water. Most horrifying: She had seen the results of the global child trafficking trade.
"We met kids in the orphanage as young as 5 to 12 who had been rescued from trafficking," said Kime, who lives in Lancaster.
Kime concluded the only way she could live with herself, in her privileged country, was by raising awareness and money to combat trafficking.
The result is a benefit concert Friday, Feb. 6, at Lancaster Bible College, featuring the nationally known Christian band Ten Shekel Shirt. All proceeds go to LOVE146, a nonprofit founded by lead singer Lamont Hiebert, a self-described abolitionist, dedicated to ending child slavery and exploitation.
Trafficking is a stunningly big, profitable trade; an estimated 1.2 million children are trafficked each year."You think you can wrap your mind around it," Kime said, "but you can't."
Seeing too much
Kime's eyes were opened when she traveled to Cambodia last March with Aiyana Ehrman, a co-founder of Who Cares (www.whocaresonline.net), which has established projects in Cambodia, Zanzibar and Ethiopia to help "the poor, exploited and vulnerable."
Ehrman, formerly of Lancaster County, is married to Jim Ehrman, executive director of the new World Christianity Project at Yale University. Before Yale, Jim Ehrman headed the Evangelical Congregational Church Global Ministries Office; Kime's husband Joel, senior pastor of Faith Evangelical Congregational Church on Old Philadelphia Pike, served on the EC office's board.
A year ago, Aiyana Ehrman invited Michelle Kime to accompany her on an oversight mission to Cambodia.
The women partnered with the Cambodian Hope Organization (www.cambodianhope.org), a faith-based nonprofit in Poipet, Cambodia.
The nation is still reeling from the devastation of Khmer Rouge rule, which resulted in the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians in the 1970s.
"I saw poverty like I had never seen before," Kime said.
She visited one village of about 200 people that had no well for water. When Kime returned, she told the story at Faith EC, and two members came forward to underwrite the cost of a well.
By the time Kime, 34, went back in December, the well had been drilled, and she celebrated with a drink of fresh water.
What Kime, the mother of four children ages 11, 10, 5 and 3, learned about child trafficking was even more eye-opening than the poverty she saw.
LOVE146 (www.love146.org) estimates that 27 million people are enslaved worldwide, more than double the number of Africans forced into slavery during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The reason: It's a lucrative trade, worth an estimated $32 billion.
The United Nations puts the annual number of children who are trafficked at 1.2 million. Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, is one of the regions that supplies most of the trafficked children.
Trafficking involves forcing, coercing or deceiving another person into work or sexual exploitation. Children are kidnapped or sold into slavery by their families — sometimes with promises that the child will have a good job. But trafficked children end up in sweatshops, in brothels or serving as child soldiers.
"I never realized the extent of it," Kime said. Or that the demand for child prostitutes in southeast Asia is fueled by Western sex tourists.
In Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, "everywhere you went you saw middle-aged Western men and young Cambodians," Kime said.
She spent her last two days in Cambodia at a debriefing session at the famed Angkor Wat temples.
"I clearly remember thinking, 'What do I do?' With new knowledge comes new responsibility, and I had much new knowledge."
She decided that she had to continue to educate herself on the problem, and to "share the education I was given."
New awareness
One way she's educating is through the concert.
Kime found the LOVE146 Web site in the course of researching child trafficking. It turned out that the Ehrmans are friends with Ten Shekel Shirt's Hiebert, who had put his musical career on hold for several years to launch LOVE146. The band released a new CD, "Jubilee," in 2008.
"In my mind, rock music, faith and social justice are meant to go together, so agreeing to this benefit concert was a no brainer," Hiebert said by e-mail.
The concert "will prevent child abductions and will help care for survivors of modern-day slavery and exploitation. Lancaster County has a rich history in the abolition of slavery. It's time to revive that passion.
"The band cut its fees so sponsors could underwrite the concert. Lancaster Bible College agreed to donate the venue, and Faith EC's missions committee also is a partner. Sponsors include Highland Car Wash, Nancy's Van Service and Martin's Flooring, plus an anonymous donor.
Now Kime is getting another kind of education: riders, contracts and all the details of concert promotion. "I didn't know what I was doing," she said.
But she's doing it for a purpose: to eradicate child trafficking."It's unimaginable for us in America," she said.
Ten Shekel Shirt performs at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 6, at Lancaster Bible College, 901 Eden Road. Tickets are $10 in advance or $12 at the door. To order, call 393-5345 or e-mail jim.gustafson@findfaithhere.org. All proceeds and an offering will benefit LOVE146.org.
Feb 01, 2009
Concert Friday at LBC is fundraiser in fight to end child slavery
By Helen Colwell Adams, Staff Writer
After her first trip to Cambodia, Michelle Kime had to ask herself a question: "How do I live here now?"
She had seen grinding poverty, poor sanitation, filthy water. Most horrifying: She had seen the results of the global child trafficking trade.
"We met kids in the orphanage as young as 5 to 12 who had been rescued from trafficking," said Kime, who lives in Lancaster.
Kime concluded the only way she could live with herself, in her privileged country, was by raising awareness and money to combat trafficking.
The result is a benefit concert Friday, Feb. 6, at Lancaster Bible College, featuring the nationally known Christian band Ten Shekel Shirt. All proceeds go to LOVE146, a nonprofit founded by lead singer Lamont Hiebert, a self-described abolitionist, dedicated to ending child slavery and exploitation.
Trafficking is a stunningly big, profitable trade; an estimated 1.2 million children are trafficked each year."You think you can wrap your mind around it," Kime said, "but you can't."
Seeing too much
Kime's eyes were opened when she traveled to Cambodia last March with Aiyana Ehrman, a co-founder of Who Cares (www.whocaresonline.net), which has established projects in Cambodia, Zanzibar and Ethiopia to help "the poor, exploited and vulnerable."
Ehrman, formerly of Lancaster County, is married to Jim Ehrman, executive director of the new World Christianity Project at Yale University. Before Yale, Jim Ehrman headed the Evangelical Congregational Church Global Ministries Office; Kime's husband Joel, senior pastor of Faith Evangelical Congregational Church on Old Philadelphia Pike, served on the EC office's board.
A year ago, Aiyana Ehrman invited Michelle Kime to accompany her on an oversight mission to Cambodia.
The women partnered with the Cambodian Hope Organization (www.cambodianhope.org), a faith-based nonprofit in Poipet, Cambodia.
The nation is still reeling from the devastation of Khmer Rouge rule, which resulted in the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians in the 1970s.
"I saw poverty like I had never seen before," Kime said.
She visited one village of about 200 people that had no well for water. When Kime returned, she told the story at Faith EC, and two members came forward to underwrite the cost of a well.
By the time Kime, 34, went back in December, the well had been drilled, and she celebrated with a drink of fresh water.
What Kime, the mother of four children ages 11, 10, 5 and 3, learned about child trafficking was even more eye-opening than the poverty she saw.
LOVE146 (www.love146.org) estimates that 27 million people are enslaved worldwide, more than double the number of Africans forced into slavery during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The reason: It's a lucrative trade, worth an estimated $32 billion.
The United Nations puts the annual number of children who are trafficked at 1.2 million. Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, is one of the regions that supplies most of the trafficked children.
Trafficking involves forcing, coercing or deceiving another person into work or sexual exploitation. Children are kidnapped or sold into slavery by their families — sometimes with promises that the child will have a good job. But trafficked children end up in sweatshops, in brothels or serving as child soldiers.
"I never realized the extent of it," Kime said. Or that the demand for child prostitutes in southeast Asia is fueled by Western sex tourists.
In Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, "everywhere you went you saw middle-aged Western men and young Cambodians," Kime said.
She spent her last two days in Cambodia at a debriefing session at the famed Angkor Wat temples.
"I clearly remember thinking, 'What do I do?' With new knowledge comes new responsibility, and I had much new knowledge."
She decided that she had to continue to educate herself on the problem, and to "share the education I was given."
New awareness
One way she's educating is through the concert.
Kime found the LOVE146 Web site in the course of researching child trafficking. It turned out that the Ehrmans are friends with Ten Shekel Shirt's Hiebert, who had put his musical career on hold for several years to launch LOVE146. The band released a new CD, "Jubilee," in 2008.
"In my mind, rock music, faith and social justice are meant to go together, so agreeing to this benefit concert was a no brainer," Hiebert said by e-mail.
The concert "will prevent child abductions and will help care for survivors of modern-day slavery and exploitation. Lancaster County has a rich history in the abolition of slavery. It's time to revive that passion.
"The band cut its fees so sponsors could underwrite the concert. Lancaster Bible College agreed to donate the venue, and Faith EC's missions committee also is a partner. Sponsors include Highland Car Wash, Nancy's Van Service and Martin's Flooring, plus an anonymous donor.
Now Kime is getting another kind of education: riders, contracts and all the details of concert promotion. "I didn't know what I was doing," she said.
But she's doing it for a purpose: to eradicate child trafficking."It's unimaginable for us in America," she said.
Ten Shekel Shirt performs at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 6, at Lancaster Bible College, 901 Eden Road. Tickets are $10 in advance or $12 at the door. To order, call 393-5345 or e-mail jim.gustafson@findfaithhere.org. All proceeds and an offering will benefit LOVE146.org.
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