Ministry sets up salon in Cambodia to help women

Gregory McGrath, a hair stylist who works at Lavida Hair Boutique in Maricopa, gives a haircut to a boy in Poipet, Cambodia. Submitted photo.

By Tim Howsare
www.maricopa.com
April 8, 2012

When Maricopa resident Gregory McGrath first arrived in Poipet, a village in Cambodia on the Thailand border, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

There were three villages all within the city dump, he said. He held a 6-month-old who had never been out of the dump. And when he passed out some new clothes to children, they held the clothes up to their noses to savor the freshness.

“They had never smelled anything fresh there before,” McGrath said.

Despite their extreme poverty, when he handed balls to the children to play with, the youngsters wanted to give them back. Not because they don’t like to play, but because they are taught not to keep things that don’t belong to them.

McGrath went on a 12-day mission trip to Cambodia in February with XP Ministries and Media.

About 80 percent of the children from Cambodia trafficked into the sex trade in Thailand go through Poipet, said Patricia King, who founded the Maricopa ministry in 2005.

Along with its efforts to minister God’s word and feed the poor, XP Ministries is committed to freeing children from the sex trade and creating businesses in underdeveloped countries, King said.

McGrath is employed by King as a professional stylist at Lavida Hair Boutique, a salon King opened in the Stage Stop Marketplace last year.

McGrath and King traveled to Poipet to set up a hair salon so young women and girls can become beauticians and earn a living without going into the sex trade.

“By teaching them to do hair we are teaching them how to fish,” McGrath said.

The hair salon in Maricopa helps support King’s mission work in Cambodia.

“We are taking money from the business here and sending it to help the children there,” she said. “We had Gregory come over from Lavida and we are setting up a salon. From our salon over there, girls coming out of sex trade are getting trained as beauticians.”

Though the challenge is huge, there is strength in numbers, she said.

“I believe we can abolish modern-day slavery in our lifetime,” she said. “We believe that every life that is impacted makes a difference. We are working with the UN and other government agencies through XP missions and working through networks of ministries.”

Along with the hair salon, King said her mission in Cambodia also set up a laundry business providing income to three or four families, a coffee shop, a bakery and a jewelry store.

“These businesses are all giving people work,” she said.

The ministry also is setting up a children’s home in Cambodia.

XP Ministries is nonprofit while XP Media is for-profit, King said. The XP studio produces TV shows, mini movies and video clips.

“Everything we do here in Maricopa reaches the world,” she said. “We are a Maricopa-based company with 50 employees and 15,000 unique visitors a day.”

Originally from Canada, King was a cardiovascular nurse for 10 years before getting into ministry in 1980.

The call of God came into my life and my husband Ron and I wanted to serve the poor and the missions, so we left our secular employment and went for it,” she said.

She found out about Maricopa during the building boom from a friend and was intrigued by the opportunity the burgeoning community had to offer. She bought the property on Hathaway Avenue, which housed an old church, and built a media studio producing Christian-based programming.

While the people who work in the studio are paid employees, most of the mission work is done by volunteers.