Right after finishing Go For Gold! in December, I went on a month-long trip to Asia where I was performing and promoting my upcoming solo album, all while spreading the word about MTV EXIT (http://www.mtvexit.org) and human trafficking.
First, I flew to Phnom Penh, Cambodia and did a show with The Click Five for over 40,000 people (whoa!) to support MTV EXIT. Our song “Don’t Let Me Go” has since gone to #2 in Cambodia for top radio songs of 2012, and the Music Vid for the song has passed 1.2 Million views on YouTube (!)
While in Cambodia, we visited 2 shelters. The first was called “Friends”, (http://www.friends-international.org) which is like a safe haven for young people in Cambodia who don’t have anywhere else to go. Like a Boys & Girls Club, but way more. First of all, as soon as we got there, we had kids crawling all over us in excitement. I’m pretty sure I ended up with a young boy on my shoulders and I had nothing to do with putting him up there. I think they were really surprised by how tall we all were.
The kids were there to learn, play, and create, and then ultimately acquire the skills to get a job that can support them / their families. There was a ton of energy there, all positive. Looking to the future, not the past. We were “ChildSafe Trained”, which means we were taken through the proper steps for dealing with a young child who is asking for money or asking you to buy something. We learned that it’s not a good thing to give them money or buy their items. You may think you’re helping them, but ultimately that money is not going to them. It could be part of a larger organization. We then took a tour of the facility where we saw the classrooms and workshops where the kids learn and create.
After the tour of the grounds, we set up to play a short acoustic set, using no amplification, sitting on colorfully painted wooden benches. We had to reconfigure a few times because we were worried we’d break the benches with all 5 of us sitting on them at once. They were small benches. Finally we got it all set up and the MTV crew that was there filming got set up to capture our performance for a documentary series, and got a single mic set up to record the unplugged nature of our performance. We started playing but the clapping and excitement of the 400 kids was much (MUCH) louder than anything we were doing, which was very evident and funny during the set. It made it that much more fun for us, and the kids still loved it, even though they couldn’t really hear us. Check out the Friends blog for pics of our visit.
Next we visited a shelter for victims of human trafficking, specifically young girls who had gone through sex trafficking, which is a scenario where they are prisoners in a brothel, cannot leave, and are forced to have sex with men who are paying for it. Sometimes the girls would have 15 “clients” per day and were heavily sedated. These girls have now been rescued from these brothels and live in a shelter called Dream Home that is run by “Transitions” (http://transitionsglobal.org) and are going through the process of regaining the strength to enter everyday life again. They are by far the bravest people I’ve met in my life, and are still so young. most of them were under 25. Again at this shelter, the vibe was light, cheerful, and everyone was happy to have us there. We sat and had a conversation with 3 of the girls and learned what they wanted to do with their lives moving forward and two of the girls wanted to go into social work and help others. The third was a talented artist. They were all eager to give us friendship bracelets that they made, and show us their artwork and teach us Khmer (Traditional Cambodian) language and phrases, which I then used on stage in front of the crazed 40,000 people the next night. A simple “Thank You” translates to ‘awkunh’ which made the crowd go wild. Thanks to the girls at “Transitions” for the lesson. Check out Transitions’ Facebook album for pics.
The visits to “Friends” and “Transitions” absolutely changed my life and I feel like I grew up a few years having been there. It made me realize how amazing my life is and how fortunate I am to have grown up in a great family, great environment, have the means to do pretty much every activity I wanted, and learn at the best institutions. It further made me realize that I also don’t have real problems. Of course it’s all in the eye of the beholder, and my life gets hard sometimes, but compared to what these young people had been through it’s not even close, not even in the same realm or on the same graph. They’ve seen the darkest of dark and if I can have a part in helping them forget that, even if it’s only for the three and a half minutes I’m playing a song for them, that’s a plus in my book and does make a difference.
kp
