LA’s art and luxury fashion retailer to the stars, Church Boutique, and the eco-fashion house Ministry of Tomorrow (MOT) have teamed up with Christie’s and their online charity auction partner CharityBuzz to produce Art for Education for the benefit of the Chema Vision Children’s Center (Chema) in Nairobi, Kenya.
The auction went live on June 1st, 2021 and runs through June 16th. The bags are on display for public viewing at Christie’s in Manhattan throughout the auction which coincides with luxury bag week at Christie’s.
The Chema school is situated in the midst of Kibera, Africa’s largest urban slum and was established to provide quality education for some of Kibera’s most vulnerable children. Many of the students are orphans or children of single parents without income to pay for school fees.
Just before the pandemic, Chema was forced to relocate because the school’s building structure was not up to code. MOT’s vegan bag production facility is located near the school and Julian Prolman, president of MOT heard about the school’s predicament. Through an initial fundraiser orchestrated by MOT, Chema was able to relocate to a safe building. However, Chema is currently lacking much needed funds to pay its teachers and cover its operational expenses that includes a daily meal for the students.
Julian turned to MOT’s LA retail partners, Rodney Burns and David Malvaney, Church Boutique’s founders about the urgent need at Chema and they swiftly agreed to join MOT to co-produce the celebrity driven art auction to help raise the necessary funds.
Tother they reached out to their celebrity friends to request that they paint their artistic expressions on MOT’s new organic canvas tote bag to be auctioned online via CharityBuzz.
Without hesitation, an impressive group of noted celebrities came together to volunteer their creative painting skills including Madonna, Naomi Campbell, Halle Berry, Zoe Kravitz, Lenny Kravitz, Usher, Lionel Richie, Bria Murphy, Eddie Murphy, Maggie Q, Evan Ross, Raquel Bitton, Paris Jackson, Lee Daniels, David Banda and more..
In addition, Laurie Lynn Stark the creator of the international jewelry and clothing brand Chrome Hearts joined in to create her own unique MOT tote.
“We believe that luxury is a privilege that comes with the responsibility to care for others in need and therefore we are thrilled to collaborate with MOT to do what we can to make a difference in the lives of children born into challenging circumstances” said Rodney Burns.
All proceeds from the auction will be donated to Chema to help fund the schools operating budget with a goal to raise $100k.
“Chema is a Swahili word meaning something good, and that is what we are trying to do with Art for Education” said Julian Prolman.
