For Bethany and Thomas Hall, sending a check to an organization that will fight poverty in distant lands was not enough.

The two area educators have learned the benefits of seeing, feeling and living among people in some of the most poverty-stricken areas of the world.

For the third year in a row, the couple are organizing a fundraiser, “A Night of Voices,” featuring a variety of musical entertainment at  Wagon Wheel Theater Center for the Arts.

The show starts at 7 p.m. and $25 tickets are available online and at the theater.

Proceeds from the benefit will go to When I Grow Up, an organization that helps fund teacher salaries and medical support for students in Haiti, Guatemala and Kenya.

The Halls met Gilbert Foster, the founder of When I Grow Up, nearly years ago through their involvement at Warsaw Wesleyan Church where Thomas serves as pastor.  

Foster, who is from Scotland, has worked as a coach with the church’s leadership.

Foster established the organization 12 years ago and his vision rubbed off on the Halls after a few years of friendship.

The group’s mission follows the belief echoed by theologian Eugene Peterson, who believed “the poor is not a problem to be solved, but a people to be joined.”



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“The sole purpose of traveling with When I Grow Up is to learn about what extreme poverty looks like, feels like, smells like from across the globe,” Bethany said. “It’s a learning process to see what their lives look like.”

From a monetary perspective, extreme poverty is defined as a family living on $1.25 a day, and includes an estimated one-sixth of the world’s population living in slums.

For many, their days are spent in search of food, she said.

Bethany, who works as a media specialist with Manchester Community Schools, worked in a school last summer in Haiti.

Those kind of trips abroad, she said, “allow you to communicate with the people who happen to live in extreme poverty because of where they were born that they are not alone and that they are not being ignored by the rest of society and that we are here to help their dreams and visions come alive, and we can do that with funding.”

“Those visions don’t come alive just naturally in a slum,” she said.

Foster and Bethany will speak briefly at the start of Friday’s show, then  turn the stage over to singers who Thomas works with through his voice classes at the church and through his role as choir teacher and musical director at Warsaw Community High School.

The third annual “A Night of Voices” concert will feature group musical numbers, duets and solos, as well as performances by Jennifer Dow and Kira Lace Hawkins, who are associated with Wagon Wheel Theatre.

To learn more about When I?Grow Up, check out whenigrowup-global.com.