Around 100 people turned out on Sunday, June 24 at Christ’s Church at Whitewater to show their support for Brittany Enterkin’s fund-raising campaign to build a schoolhouse in a rural Cambodia. Six bands, four from Athens and two local groups, provided entertainment as the crowd lay on blankets and sat in lawn chairs in the dimming sunlight.

That Enterkin, a senior at Whitewater High School, would successfully raise the $13,000 was a foregone conclusion, as she had already secured more than $12,500 in donations. “It’s been a lot of hard work,” she said. “The concert’s pretty much the icing on the cake.”

Alejandro Crawford was in attendance to show his altruism and to support his younger sister, Sara Crawford, also a senior at Whitewater High School, who helped coordinate the event. “Cambodia’s just such a good cause. We love children, and school, and rock and roll,” he said.

The donations will be used to build a school for 300 to 400 Cambodian children and a well to accompany it. Addressing one of the perils common to the young and poor in Cambodia, Enterkin said, “If I can provide a child with an education, they don’t have to go into sex trafficking.” American Assistance for Cambodia, a nonprofit organization founded in 1993 by Bernard Krishner, will handle the money, the sum of which will be matched by the Bank of Asia.

Enterkin hopes to visit Cambodia next summer to see the culmination of her charity work, The Steve and Mary School, named in honor of her parents.

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