“Blue Jeans for Teens”
June 14th, 7:00 p.m.
Humphrey’s Backstage Lounge
2241 Shelter Island Drive
An evening of blues, dancing, food, cocktails, opportunity drawing and fun!
Please donate lightly used or new jeans and sweats for San Diego’s homeless teens.
Live music by Chet and the Committee, Candye Kane, Charles Burton, Mercedes Moore and more.
Donations will be accepted for Photocharity.
A Sporting Life Healthy Family Festival
Sunday, May 23rd
10am-5pm
Oak Crest Middle School Upper Field
There will be kid’s activities, booths, live music and an appearance by Tony Hawk
Encinitas Street Fair
April 24 & 25
9am-5pm
Highway 101 between D & J Streets
Look for our booth where we will be raffling off a Mini Grand Prix Package courtesy of K1 Speed in Carlsbad. The package includes two 14-lap races for 8 people. The top three finishers receive medals on the podium during an awards ceremony.
PROFILE IN COURAGE, CELEBRATION OF HOPE
Thursday, November 5, 2009
 Joseph has the voice of an angel, as befits a gifted young artist who honed his vocal skills as a child while performing here in churches where his preacher father presided over services.
His ability to soar in song will be showcased Sunday at downtown’s all-ages Anthology, where Joseph (who does not use his last name professionally) will perform as part of the annual Celebration of Hope gala dinner concert and auction. The lineup also includes top San Diego singer-songwriter Eve Selis, Jen Knight, Aja Alycean and a band of local homeless teenagers.
The teens met at the Storefront, San Diego Youth Services’ emergency shelter for homeless and runaway youth. The nonprofit Photocharity has raised more than $1.5 million since 2001 for the Storefront, whose Outreach Team annually aids 2,500 San Diego teens in need of food, shelter, clothing and a chance to get off the streets.
Joseph, 20, will perform several songs at Sunday’s fundraiser. He can personally attest to the invaluable services the Storefront provides. At 17, he found himself living on the streets after he became estranged from his family. Tensions had risen to a boil, Joseph said, after he informed his parents that he didn’t think he was cut out for a heterosexual lifestyle.
"I wrote my first song, ‘Don’t Stop,’ then," Joseph said. "It was about what I was going through, being homeless, and how I was telling myself to look ahead and keep pushing forward. The Storefront helped me deal with some of the things I was going through and got me into Turning Point, a transitional living program in City Heights."
Joseph, who cites Stevie Wonder and neo-gospel star Kirk Franklin among his favorite singers, now lives in an apartment with a friend. He has a full-time day job and an avocational manager to help with his budding music career. All he needs now is more experience and exposure.
"Joseph has an amazing voice and presence," said Grammy Award-winning gospel and blues album producer Chris Goldsmith, a North County resident. "He’s like other children in this country who could be stars, if they can rise above unfortunate circumstances and bad situations."
A profile in young courage, the soft-spoken Joseph is striving to rise above his circumstances.
"I do hope my relationship with my family will improve," he said. "But if it doesn’t, I just have to keep going on with what I’m doing now. It’s important to have a house of hope in your life, so that you can be a better person and give back to the community."
Tickets for a Celebration of Hope are available online (photocharity.org) and by phone, (619) 838-1952.
A MIXED BAGPIPE OF SCOTTISH FOLK TUNES
After 40 years and 30 albums, the Battlefield Band has helped set the gold standard for traditional and contemporary Scottish folk music. The four-man group, which performs here tomorrow night in Normal Heights at the all-ages AMSD concerts (formerly Acoustic Music San Diego), has gone through at least 18 lineup changes since its inception in Glasgow in 1969. But its artistic mission — to uphold and extend the earthy traditions in which its music is rooted — remains much the same now as then.
This willingness to look forward and back, sometimes in the same song, gives the Battlefield Band an edge on stage and on record. Its latest release, "Zama Zama, Try Your Luck," began as a concept album about gold, then turned into something far more ambitious as the global economy began to plummet last year.
Accordingly, its songs are inspired by everything from medieval German robber barons and the Australian and Alaskan gold rushes of the 18th century to India’s diamond trade, a 1957 Scottish coal mining disaster and the Hawaiian fish god Ku’Ula-Kai.
The engaging result is a suitably eclectic Celtic music album that draws from an array of seemingly disparate sources, yet makes them all sound natural and compatible. That’s why it makes perfect sense that the classic Nina Simone ballad, "Plain Gold Ring," sounds right at home with fiddle and bouzouki accompaniment, while a weathered bagpipe number, "The Flirting Brown Maid," is set to a chord progression that evokes Jimi Hendrix’s "Purple Haze." (Incidentally, Mike Katz — whose contributions to the Battlefield Band include various pipes and whistles, guitar, bass, vocals and tap-dancing — sports a beard long enough to earn him immediate honorary membership in ZZ Top.
Tickets for the Battlefield Band’s concert tomorrow are available online (amsdconcerts.com) and by phone, (619) 303-8176.
George Varga: (619) 293-2253; george.Varga@uniontrib.com
This teen's new tune is picture perfect
Joseph didn't seem a likely candidate for homelessness.
He had a stable, albeit strict, upbringing in a religious family. He sang in the church choir from the time he was a small child. His grades were good, he avoided the temptations of drugs and alcohol, and his parents limited his exposure to music and media that they considered possible bad influences.
Read it online
$280,000 Check Presentation 6-09
On June 15th the Board of Directors and Founder and Photocharity President, Jeffrey Sitcov, presented a $280,000 donation to the Storefront Shelter to continue to save Homeless Youth in San Diego County. Photocharity is the single largest private funder of the emergency shelter, the only one in San Diego specifically for homeless youth and which outreaches to find and provides resources to homeless youth.
View Photo
Casting a lifeline
Presentation recognizes four years of creating awareness of the problem of homeless youth on our streets.
Read it online
Photocharity awarded 10 News Leadership Award
Homeless teens get a boost thanks to some generous pop stars – and the efforts of the angels from Photocharity
George Varga, Union-Tribune Pop Music Critic, features Photocharity efforts in the Friday, April 28, 2006 paper!
Read it online
Photocharity presents check for $135,000 to the Storefront
Emergency Shelter for San Diego Teens benefits from the efforts of volunteers like you!
2004: Photocharity raises $152,000 in its effort to support the Storefront
Total giving in the past three years: $300,000. Nearly 80% of gross proceeds before expenses funded programs for homeless teens.
Union Tribune writes about Photocharity in 2004
Once again, columnist George Varga reports on the work we're doing.
Union Tribune article on Photocharity by George Varga, 3/26/04
Details
North County Times reports on Photocharity efforts
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