Community Arts Center
Changing Lives Through Music Education
Music Transforms Lives
Welcome to our project page! Let me take this chance to introduce myself—I’m Dr. Lynne Picker. Since 1990, our family has served with the Alliance in Asia. After studying Cantonese and Mandarin, Don and I responded to God’s leading to use our professions to work in a creative-access country.
From 2007 to 2021, I directed the Community Arts Center, a music school where over 1,000 students entered our doors to study Western classical music. However, when COVID-19 emerged, we had to close our storefronts and relocate to Bangkok, Thailand. From this centralized location, I can visit foster homes, orphanages, and rehabilitation centers in Southeast Asia as I meet some of the world’s most courageous youth and hear their stories of tragedy, poverty, illness, and loss. Their stories move me, and their love for music confirms in my heart that God wants me to continue this work. I want nothing more than to connect them to the power of music. Research has proven that ensemble-based music education opportunities profoundly affect at-risk youth, and participating in a handbell choir fosters self-confidence, empathy, community, and resilience.
In 2022, we launched our first Handbells in Their Hands Project in a foster home in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Today, the handbells ARE in their hands, and we continue to provide them with regular instruction and teacher training. Their dream is to use these beautiful instruments to draw people into the family of God through musical performances in Cambodia’s countryside.
Handbells in Their Hands 2023–2025
Placing Handbells in the Hands of At-Risk Youth in Southeast Asia
Over the next two years, our goal is to launch handbell choirs in orphanages and rehabilitation centers throughout Southeast Asia. As you can imagine, this requires an increase in our monthly support. I’m praying for 30 individuals to commit to $100/month over the next two years.
Your sponsorship will enable us to design, implement, and sustain culturally sensitive music education programs based on their geographical location and the needs of their students and teachers. Would you consider becoming a monthly donor so that we can continue to transform lives together through the amazing vehicle of music education?
One hundred percent of your donation goes directly to the Community Arts Center and Music in the Mountains.
The Community Arts Center is not an official CAMA project. Music in the Mountains and the center is run by a marketplace ministry worker who is a long-time CAMA partner.
Have a Question about This Project?
Please reach out by emailing CAMA at cama@camaservices.org.