Forrest Frank and Noah Hayden’s unexpected band name wipeout has turned into a Party Wave leading to thousands of dollars being raised for a ministry fighting child trafficking in Guatemala.
According to its website, A Father’s Heart Children’s Ministry was begun to “help children in extreme poverty in Guatemala. We want to educate, feed, and prepare the children for life. Most importantly, we want to protect them from human trafficking.”
“We believe extreme poverty is the main cause of human trafficking. Guatemala is only the size of Tennessee and is the number 1 country in Central America for trafficking,” the ministry states. “Over 40,000 children were taken into trafficking just last year. Our goal is to prevent that. We believe we can do so by educating the children while trying to curve that extreme poverty level in their lives.”
Orbis Nieves, founder of the ministry, set a goal of $200,000 to build a place of refuge and healing for Guatemalan children. More than $92,000 has been raised as a direct result of Frank and Hayden’s rebranding contest.
Last month, Frank shared that his new project with Hayden would be called “Dawn Patrol.” The name was chosen out of their love of surfing and was given the green light by the band’s music distributor. Following the success of the band’s first single, Instagram deactivated the band’s social media page due to copyright infringement.
Their music distributor was prepared to legally fight for the page to be reactivated, but Frank and Hayden had another idea.
“This whole project is to serve the Lord and help bring people together in community. So I actually think that this could be a moment where God is wanting to extend that—this is like an extension of that seed,” Frank said. “So rather than fight it and go the legal route and stuff like that, I think the best thing to do would be just to change our name.”
“We want to use it to bless someone out there,” Hayden said.
So the duo offered $10,000 for someone to name their band. Participants were asked to submit their proposed band name in the comment section on social media. Frank and Hayden chose the name Party Wave, which refers to sharing a wave with multiple surfers at one time.
