A Kitchener, ON, church youth group shared the message of MEDA at a recent concert. The Blenheim Ecumenical House Church (BEHC) youth group organized a benefit concert for MEDA Trust Sept. 26 at Kitchener's Gig Concert Theatre. Proceeds were donated to the youth group's MEDA Trust account for investment in poor entrepreneurs around the world.
About 100 young fans heard the music of bands Seven Last Words, The Surge, Courage, My Love, The Dogbus, Signal To Noise, My Curse, My Chaos and Azalea Arson. Young organizer Mercedes Arn-Horn, pictured on guitar with her sister, Phoenix on drums, shares their story here.
MEDA staff members Serge LeVert-Chiasson and Caleb MacDonald gave band members an introduction to MEDA and MEDA Trust at a workshop held in advance of the concert and also spoke to the crowd at the event.
Mercedes Arn-Horn
In January 2008 our youth group at BEHC – Blenheim Ecumenical House Church –
decided to invest $400 in MEDA Trust, a sum donated to us by our church members. Our loan was later tripled by anonymous donors and grew to $1,600.
The youth group – Henry Dyck, Jake Ewert, my twin sister Phoenix Arn-Horn and I – got together one day to decide who we would give our first loans to. We started off with three people: a single middle-aged mother in Afghanistan who wanted to own a grocery store; an elderly man in Nicaragua with six children who wanted to start an agriculture business; and a woman who wanted to go into arts and crafts.
We felt a great deal of joy at being able to help people in different countries who were in need, and we were amazed when our loans were repaid in a matter of months. Apparently our loans had helped people start businesses steady enough that they could be paid back. This cycle continued, each time with the same results.
We were surprised at the ease of use and efficiency of the system for giving loans. We monitored our loans periodically when our youth group met, and continued to re-invest the repaid money in projects put forward by various people in Nicaragua and Afghanistan. Our initial $400 investment has grown to support more than $4,000 worth of projects, and of the nine loans which we have made to date, four have been repaid and five are still active.
After our first loan was repaid, my friends and I were eager to do more. We are all pretty into music and we’d formed a band, jamming and practicing (but mostly just having fun) in our attic. We really were pleased with MEDA Trust and our small part in it, and we longed to do more and let more people know about MEDA.
It was really my Mom’s bright idea to create a benefit concert to raise money for MEDA, and the four of us loved it as soon as we heard it. We were itching to play for the public anyway, and if it were for a great cause like MEDA, why not? Music was what we had to offer, and knowledge of the work MEDA was doing. We contacted other local bands and they were happy to perform, especially for a worthy cause. My Mom worked her “mom magic” and booked us the Gig Theatre for Sept. 26 in downtown Kitchener.
Needless to say, our next goal was to sell tickets and spread the word about this amazing show. We had six bands agree to play the show: Poor Man’s Parachute, Courage My Love, Dogbus, Silence Calls the Storm, Azalea Arson and our youth-group band, Seven Last Words. All of them were excited to support MEDA and the work that MEDA has been doing so well.
We raised about $1,000 and told many people about MEDA and what they could do to be a part of it. Since the show we have grown hungry to make more loans, tell more people and play more shows. We still value that feeling of significance, of being able to help, that MEDA first gave us all those months before. MEDA may have been the inspiration, but the dream is one we all share, the goal a common one: To help those who are in need of help. I feel that we did.
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