Ping pong will be played non-stop for 24 hours in churches to raise funds to help sexually exploited and trafficked young people in South East Asia.

The ‘Ping Pong-A-Thon’ started in 2011 when Adrian Rowse gathered 15 mates to play 24 hours of ping pong as a fundraiser for an NGO in Thailand he had worked with. They raised $10,000.

This year, the Ping Pong-A-Thon will be held at 25 venues across Australia, with the goal of raising $100,000 for a range of partner organisations working in Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines.

A male-only event, Adrian says the idea is to creatively engage young men with the issues surrounding sexual exploitation and the global sex trade.

“Predominantly it’s women who are engaged with being part of the solution to these issues, so we started the event to try and engage men, particularly because men are clearly a significant part of the problem.”

Not wanting the event to simply be a “Christian fundraiser”, Adrian is encouraging those participating to invite their mates along. He’s also involving new venues this year, including a community hall, a pub and a table tennis club.

“We don’t feel like this is an issue that only Christian men should be engaged with, and we don’t feel the need to plaster the Jesus name all over our event.

“We feel like it displays the heart of God for justice and it also kind of displays God’s heart for building community amongst the men who participate. We feel that God is big enough to breathe through it instead of us labelling it a Christian thing.”

Men can sign up for a minimum of 3 hours, and during their “shift” will be shown a short, educational clip. Adrian says this is often when those who’ve just turned up for the ping pong become advocates.

“We get guys who show up who haven’t raised any money, but then after seeing the video, they start texting their friends and posting on Facebook. That’s when they get it.”

Adrian says the idea behind using 24-hour ping pong as a way of fundraising came “like bad pizza—in the middle of the night”.

Not having any great ping pong ability, the idea sprang instead from his knowledge of Thailand’s red light district. Having worked for an NGO helping rehabilitate former sex workers, he’d come across the use of the phrase “Ping Pong” on the street. “Sex workers “wave a menu at you saying ‘You want Ping Pong’?” he says, explaining that it’s a slang term for a sex show in Thailand involving ping pong balls.

The other reason for choosing ping pong is its universality. “It’s also just a game that anyone can play and not take too seriously,” he says (though some people obviously do, as is indicated by the event’s promo video).

Adrian says the event has had some interesting by-products, including providing men with a fun, energetic outlet and way of making friends.

“We want to find some ways to make it more than a once-a-year thing, because so many guys’ lives are fragmented and lonely. We’re looking at whether we can run a monthly ping pong event that could gather some guys together to form a community that was going to engage them around these sorts of issues, and build support for each other and see what develops.”

If you’re keen to be a part of the Ping Pong-A-Thon, visit their website http://pingpongathon.com/