FROM NJ.COM
Updated: Saturday, August 14, 2010, 10:16 AM
Peter Page 
"I was having coffee with Cody a couple of weeks ago when he received an email about this,'' said Boehm, a yoga instructor. "He asked me if I wanted to ride a rickshaw across the Himalayas to help out this organization that assists sex slaves smuggled from Nepal. We talked it over and said let's do it. I might be thinking about that moment in a couple of weeks when I'm shivering in the Himalayas but this seems to me the perfect combination of a great adventure and a worthy cause.''
Boehm, Orrell and their many friends have organized a fundraising concert, headlined by Justin Guarini of American Idol fame, and a silent auction tomorrow from 2-9 p.m. at Shill Pelligrino Gallery, 204 N. Union St. in Lambertville. A $20 donation is requested at the door.
Joining Cody and Dion in India is Amar Deep Sansi whom Cody met in Mumbai in 2007, and who will serve a cultural ambassador and translator.
They are one of dozens of teams from around the world participating in the Rickshaw Run organized by Adventurists.org, an organization based in the United Kingdom that, according to its web site is "hell bent on saving the world as well as making it less boring, so all our adventures raise heaps of cash for charity.'' Each team must donate a minimum $1,500 to Maiti Nepal, a charity based in Katmandu, Nepal, working to extract women and girls from the sex trade and prepare them with education and job skills for a dignified, self-sufficient life.
According to a recent report on human trafficking by the U.S. State Department, Nepal is a global center for trafficking of women and girls into the sex trade. Traffickers, often working with corrupt police and bureaucrats, lure families into yielding their daughters with false promises of jobs or arranged marriages. Orrell said the Rickshaw Run has a double goal of raising $100,000 for Maiti Nepal and educating people in the towns and villages the riders pass through about the deceptions of the human traffickers.
"Nepal doesn't have a single language or much in the way of mass communications so people in villages don't get warned about what happens to these girls,'' he said. "Along the way we are getting flyers in the local language and posting them where we go. They tell us cow dung is the best glue available.''
Orrell said the $20 donation matches a loan he made to Sensi when they met in 2007. Sensi was then stuck on the lowest rung of the shoeshine trade in Mumbai while Orrell was reading about microfinance pioneered by Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Yunus and the bank shared the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.
"He approached me to shine my shoes, which I didn't need but I gave him a few rupees and walked on,'' Orrell recalled. "He followed me and gave back the money, saying he wasn't a beggar, just a working guy having a hard time.''
When Orrell asked Sensi, who was making around $3 on a very good day to support himself, his mother and sister, what kept him stuck living hand-to-mouth, the Indian said his biggest problem was not having a shoeshine box that allowed prosperous men to elevate their foot while their shoes were being shined.
A suitable box cost $20, which Sensi had no hope of saving. Orrell loaned Sensi $20 for the box and, as he predicted, Sensi's income has skyrocketed. In the past three years he has obtained an apartment, sheltered his mother and sister, left shoe shining behind for fulltime employment and, most recently, gotten engaged and purchased a cell phone.
"The girls trapped by human traffickers are worse off than Sensi was when I met him but Maiti Nepal is committed to helping them and I've seen first hand what hard working people can do with a little help,'' Orrell said.
The goal tomorrow is to raise at least $4,000 to fund the minimum $1,500 donation to Maiti Nepal, $1,500 registration fee for the trek and $1,000 deposit on the rickshaw. Friends of Maiti Nepal, a nonprofit organization located in Boston, Mass., will receive the donations and funnel the money to Maiti Nepal's offices in Katmandu.
Peter Page / Special to The Times
A rickshaw drives their cause - Calling attention to plight of women in Nepal, duo from Lambertville will cross India in tiny motorized vehicle | NJ.com
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