A Christian ministry that helps lift children out of poverty in Latin America is holding a benefit concert featuring The Fehr Family Band this weekend in Winkler.
Generation Rising hosts the band at the Emmanuel Mennonite Church (750 15th St.) this Friday, March 27, at 7 p.m.
It’s part of a larger tour that is bringing the Alberta-based family troupe out west, shares Rafael Duerksen, Generation Rising director.
“We’re doing three concerts with them in Ontario and then three here in Manitoba,” he says, noting last year the band performed on behalf of the ministry in Alberta and British Columbia, to great success.
The Fehr Family Band features James and Heather Fehr and their 11 children. The acoustic group regularly travel the country together to share their love of both music and God.
The evening will feature gospel songs, personal testimonies, and a message hope.
“This is more than just a concert,” Duerksen says. “It’s an opportunity for families and churches to gather, be encouraged in their faith, and be reminded of the hope we have in Christ.”
Admission to the show is free, though donations will be accepted towards Generation Rising’s work.
Those donations are integral to the ministry, Duerksen says.
“Our work has grown because we do these concerts. We don’t have the name recognition of bigger organizations, and so we depend on doing these kinds of events for people to get to know us, to partner with us for the long term. We depend on these donations to help this project—we couldn’t do it without it.”
“We partner with Christian schools in Latin America that serve children who live in extreme poverty,” Duerksen explains. “If you provide education and faith you can really lift people out of poverty in the long term.”
Funds raised this weekend will go to help a school in Honduras continue to grow.
“[It’s] on the outskirts of San Pedro Sula, and this area has gone through a lot,” Duerksen shares. “They’ve had gang wars and then a flood, and so the school we’re working with, we’re helping them renovate some classrooms.
“The school has grown over time and they have enough space, but some of their original classrooms were built for little kids. Now that the school also has a high school, they need bigger washrooms, they need to build a lab for their high school so that the students can actually complete the required work to graduate.”
Generation Rising was started in 2008 by people looking to make a difference in the world.
“We started very small,” Duerksen says. “It was just a group of friends from Winnipeg that had originally come from Paraguay and they wanted to give back to the place that they had come from.”
They began raising funds through small-scale community events to sponsor scholarships to a school in Paraguay begun by one of their founders.
“And then it just started growing from there as there were more schools that needed help,” Duerksen says. “And more people joined in.”
Today they work with schools not just in Paraguay and Honduras but Nicaragua as well.
They’ve certainly seen the fruits of their labour over the past 18 years.
“We’ve seen a lot of children … coming back and working as teachers in the schools, which is amazing to see,” says Duerksen. “We also have a university program, so we’re starting to see some of these children come through the university and they’re sharing their family story and how they, for a lot of them, will be the first people ever to go to university in their family.
“And every once in awhile as we’re walking around, someone will approach us and say, ‘Hey, I’ve from that school and this is my life now,’” he says of the kids who have gone on to build families and careers because of the education they were able to receive. “It’s a generational project. Each generation rises out of [poverty] a bit more.”
You can learn more about Generation Rising at genrising.org or check out this weekend’s concert for more stories of their impact.
