Visiting singer-songwriter Dave Nachmanoff and friends will perform on Friday, Oct. 11, 2024 to benefit women-led academy in South Sudan.
This event will be held on Friday, Oct. 11 starting at 7 p.m. at Des Moines United Methodist Church (map below).
Admission is $25.
How did a local woman develop a visceral attachment to a fledgling girls’ school a hemisphere away? No mystery, says Laura Corkern. It’s personal connections.
Corkern, 61, a high-school English teacher who has lived most of her life in Des Moines (with brief stints in Federal Way and Auburn), assembled friends in 2020 to start a foundation supporting the Bright Star Girls’ Academy in the Republic of South Sudan, near the equator in east-central Africa.
Her gregarious mother, who in Corkern’s growing-up years brought an “endless stream of people in and out of our home,” befriended two South Sudanese women in the early 1990s.
Thirty years later, the women, Harriet Dumba and Agnes Oswaha, both prominent activists and ambassadors for their country, approached Corkern seeking help to establish the first women-initiated and women-led girls’ school in their country.
“I don’t say ‘no’ to these women, ever,” Corkern said. “My personal philosophy is that I have to do something. Children who don’t have parents, it doesn’t matter where they are, I can be that person to help, I can fill that need. I just can’t stand to see children suffer or not have opportunities for a good life.”
Corkern’s foundation is the beneficiary of a Dave Nachmanoff concert set for 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 11, at Des Moines United Methodist Church, 22225 Ninth Ave. S. Admission is $25.
Nachmanoff, a versatile singer-songwriter from Davis, Calif., who is perhaps best known as the lead guitarist for Al Stewart (“Year of the Cat,” “Time Passages”), will be joined by bassist/vocalist Mike Lindauer and percussionist/vocalist Nick Carvajal.
The show is part of a Puget Sound weekend visit for Nachmanoff and his musical friends. They also will perform at 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 12, at Kenyon Hall in West Seattle and 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 13, at the Thumbnail Theater in Snohomish.
Corkern is grateful that Nachmanoff — a friend of her brother, Rod Weeks and his wife Nancy — is backing her foundation, which she says has made big progress in just a few years. The foundation has raised money for a water well and bought land for a secondary school.
Such amenities are not taken for granted. “These girls are some of the most marginalized children on the planet,” she says. “When you’re a girl and are very poor, and nothing is offered to you other than man who rules your life to sell you to another man for cattle, I have to do something.”
Corkern comes by her child activism naturally. She and her husband Sean adopted a whopping 15 youths in addition to creating one of their own. The couple recently moved to Stehekin on Lake Chelan but will be present at the Des Moines concert to answer questions — and, yes, make more personal connections.
For more information, please contact Dave Nachmanoff at dave@davenach.com or DaveNach.com, or Laura Corkern at lamatta2@aol.com or BrightStarGirlsAcademy.org.
