Join St. Supéry CEO Emma Swain for a lively discussion with Steph Johnson, co-founder and choir director of Voices of our City Choir in San Diego, CA. Learn about the origins of the choir, and the goals of building community and dignity through music.

Voices of Our City Choir changes the experience and perception of homelessness, helping San Diego's unsheltered neighbors reconnect with hope and housing through the healing power of music, individualized care, and advocacy.

Learn more: voicesofourcity.org

Donate $500 to Voices of our City and reserve a seat with us at the winery next summer for a beautiful lunch in Napa Valley. More details here: stsupery.com/givingtuesday

Happy Giving Tuesday, everyone!

We're thrilled that you could all join us for the Giving Tuesday sessions

and so excited about our guests that we have with us today.

I know many of you are familiar with St.

Supéry and you know that we love to celebrate joy.

And this season

we think it's so important to celebrate those who are bringing joy to others.

Particularly our neighbors who are experiencing homelessness and home

insecurity in their neighborhoods.

And those who are bringing great joy to others.

And so I'm so excited to have Steph Johnson, who's the CEO

and choir director for Voices of Our City Choir.

Steph, you are also amazing.

We have all of these amazing guests.

It's so fantastic.

You're the creative director and co-founder Voices of Our City Choir.

You're a recording artist.

Your TEDx speaker.

You're the 2020 Woman of the Year in California.

Oh my goodness.

Wow. And you're

a walking inspiration and a singing inspiration.

So thank you so much for for joining us.

So can you hear me OK? Yes.

I'm so inspired by the way to be on this call.

I'm sitting here with our case manager.

Our one full time employee, case manager.

Lived experience like me too, and everything you said spoke

to my heart so much and Primo...

What is it called again?

Harmony, Hope & Healing had visited us on the West Coast, and in fact,

I think it was an article by them that inspired me to start the choir.

And I just, you know, I feel so connected to all of you.

I could cry.

Thank you.

Thank you for showing me the future organization growing from that.

The resources you had to what you are now.

Jordan, meeting you is like meeting my soul brother.

I'm just really grateful, Emma,

and to everybody on your team for having this conversation.

So thank you.

Well, we

love having you and tell us how you got started

and what what's going on with Voices of Our City.

We did share a little video at the start for those

who are with us on Zoom, but we will enjoy

hearing the choir at the very end today.

But tell us how you got started. Sure.

So I was born and raised in San Diego and I

was pursuing

music and living, living a creative life.

Five years ago, I took my guitar to the street

and started to make relationships with people living unsheltered.

I knew, just like Jordan, that through conversation

and relationship building that that was so much of what people crave.

That's so much what people crave in life, right?

And I could see,

and started to educate myself, that the way that San Diego was handling

it was by criminalizing people for being homeless, right?

So they're putting people in jail and writing all these obscene tickets.

And I was just so infuriated

and wanted to - I remember I met a gentleman living

in his tent out by where we, you know, I was doing all this outreach

that I started and I said, Let's revolt!

You know, I was so upset for him.

I was like, Let's go take to the streets.

Let's go and make something happen.

And he looked at me and he laughed at me, and he said, it doesn't matter.

We don't have a voice. It doesn't matter what we say.

And I remember that, like, really stuck in my head.

And then the very next day, I met a woman who saw that

I was singing and she said "Google my name, look me up"

And she was singing in a choir, and I believe it was in Chicago.

And it was a choir for people that were experiencing homelessness.

And all of a sudden, like this, this amazing kind of vortex of music

and my purpose and the right things all kind of converging together.

I was like, I had this idea, so I called Nina Deering.

I said, "Do

you want to be the choir director?" A pastor downtown, who was meeting people

and serving the same population, offered us his space.

And so we started to invite people to a choir rehearsal where we sing

soul music and like funk tunes and anyways.

And then it started rolling and it started with a couple of people.

After a couple of months, it was like.

And then it just kept on exploding and growing,

and more people came to join us to support the people that were showing up.

And I started as trying to help one person at a time

where I would fundraise for one person and try to get someone off the street

and do whatever I could.

And now it's a full nonprofit organization.

We're still in our grassroots growing stage.

Of course.

We have four full time employees, many of us with lived experience.

Lots of choir members now that have gone through...

We have a choir, maybe over 200 people that are have come through

and been a part of the choir.

We're just rebuilding after the pandemic,

but we have helped approximately 80 individuals

move off the street and into safe housing and or shelter.

And I am not a case manager.

I know nothing about housing,

except I know a lot about building trust-based relationships.

You know, I know about creating the space for music, making good food...

like Jordan was talking about spaces that are innovative and fun to be in.

I knew how to... I knew I could create that.

And so I just started inviting all my friends living on the street

and our message of...

Our joy of coming together and making music,

our happiness of of each other being heard and seen has

made us

this kind of in-demand performance ensemble

where people want to hear the choir perform and sing.

And it's just incredible that we get these opportunities now to go.

And this was at the Jewish Film Festival we performed at our friend

Michelle in the middle right there in the white.

She made a documentary about one of our choir members

who passed away and wanted to let the world

know what the choir meant to him and the choir family.

A lot of the people that are in the choir are people who have lost family.

They don't have family anyway. They don't have that network.

So we really, really feels like family.

Did I answer the question?

I got so excited meeting you guys. I just jumped off the page there.

Well, you know, it's fine to jump off the page because we love hearing from you

and we love what you're doing with the choir program.

And you know, I think one of the things that I

really like about the choir program is when you bring people

in for choir practice and you're together during the day,

you're also able to help connect them with other services

and other things that can help improve their lives.

Do you want to talk about that a little bit? Absolutely.

So without knowing what we were doing, we became a referral agency,

so we created our own

kind of - I'm old school - All of your list of numbers.

What am I? Rolodex? I'm doing the Rolodex.

So your old school Rolodex?

There wasn't a strong connection of everybody and all the services.

I don't know what it's like in Chicago, but that didn't exist for us here.

So I had to create a database of support and how to navigate that

because of course, people

suffering PTSD and trauma are not going to be able to navigate that.

They really need an advocate.

And so today, we partner and work

with all of the housing programs, shelters,

other resources.

This is Enrique.

Enrique just joined us, and

Enrique is tasked with...We all wear a lot of hats right now,

but his job is to create a plan with an individual, see where they're at

and meet them, where they're at, and see how we can help and support them.

Not ever taking away that

that person's.

Their independence.

Their independence, yeah, their power and being in charge of their life,

you know, it's the music is so uplifting, people feel it when they walk in.

And you know, a lot of choir members that have gone through

and been with us for years and maybe we end up hiring them

or they take on another role or something and they hear me talking about

the rehearsal as being this outreach.

And the choir member goes, "Oh, it's outreach?" And I say, Yeah,

it doesn't even feel...it's not the typical kind of outreach, right?

Everybody's welcome to the choir.

But in that space, when someone's lets their guard down

and they trust us and they feel a space for them to be who they are.

Enrique, who is so wonderful at connecting with people, starts

that kind of conversation and works with people.

So it's great. Well, that is wonderful.

Share with us your biggest hurdles that you have and challenges

that you see for people on the streets who are unsheltered

showers.

Housing, dignity and opportunity.

These are people that are people.

We are all people.

We are all one and the folks that I meet...had professions, had

extreme trauma in their life,

something that happened, it could happen to any of us.

And with opportunity and support, that person

will be thriving.

That person comes back to society.

That person's stoked to be back and have something

that is a piece of them that they can bring to the table.

So biggest challenge is lack of housing.

You could talk about all the hurdles that a person faces once

they get a housing voucher, they have support.

So tell us about the hurdle when you're trying to hustle.

So I mean, first,

you have to get rid of all the barriers that exist, like he might not have an I.D.

Social Security, they haven't existed in society

because of, you know, being homeless.

So we have to take all those barriers down, then you have to find

what kind of income do they have?

And then once you kind of get them prepped for housing,

then you have to face the other side of what it is to house

because you're going to have to go

talk to property managers, they're going to run a credit check, a background check.

And so

a lot of money is invested into

the case management and these programs that house.

When you face the other side, like when you're trying to house (someone)

and there's nobody that really wants to rent to your client,

then you're facing other obstacles because there's

not places that are...

The system doesn't have a place for housing, right?

So that's where the struggle is when when you're really trying to house somebody.

People do get housed, I'm not saying they don't, but

it's it's not designed in a way where

there's like a fluidity When you're like "OK, you got the voucher.

I'm going to get them into this space because it's already contracted

that way." You have to

like, kind of battle through everything to get this person housed.

And then when they're housed, then you have the case manage the client

through that

and make sure that he can sustain himself and be able to live on its own.

So, sometimes it depends what kind of program you have in place.

It could be a 6-month, 24 month, but I was case

managing up to a 24 month period of time.

So once they are stabilized and they can live on their own,

then you're, you know, you kind of step back and enjoy,

the success of

that person being in the home and being sheltered.

And then with the choir and all the music programs we teach piano,

harmonica classes, songwriting.

The song that we performed on America's Got Talent

that got the golden buzzer, which some people saw -

a lot - like millions of people saw, which was very helpful for us.

That was a song written by our choir members in our songwriting workshop.

We also have case management, which we call choir care.

We have a whole nutrition program.

We have a distribution center.

We partner with the church and we're serving 200 people a day.

We would do more if we had more resources.

And when you said "what's the challenge" or what's...I

don't know if there's a question here "what the future looks like for us".

But since we're in the state of California and you know, Emma, you know about the

complications and challenges around housing, we are now having

the meetings and conversations to explore what it would look like

for Voices to become a housing provider and to create our own space.

Much like Jordan described where all the holistic pieces,

people who understand what you're going through and a community environment

- that people are willing and ready and want to come into our...they

would come into our shelter, they would come into our housing.

And so we want to capitalize on that and move with that kind of energy.

Even though we're grassroots and we're five years old, we're ready.

Well, the music you're making is fantastic.

Tell us a little bit about the songwriting workshop

and how you did

create the Sounds of the Sidewalk song that we are going to hear at the very end.

So we're keeping everyone on

till the very end to experience that joy that you're going to bring to us.

But tell us how how that came about.

Well, I'm a songwriter.

Songwriting, playing guitar and singing was so helpful in me

finding a voice and expressing myself.

And so having a songwriting workshop was always really important to me.

My dear friend Francesca Valle, a songwriter

musician, She

took it over and she's been leading it for probably three years.

Every every week before rehearsal,

about 10 to 20 people join.

We have a collaborative.

We have our own publishing company.We publish our own music

so we all come together and co-create.

And that song specifically was about their lived experience.

What are the sounds that you hear when you're being

asked to move in the morning or you're getting a ticket?

Or all the things that you hear and like,

"Pennies falling down into a paper cup.

Friends I've never known they're trying to look up"

"Mothers holding babies trying not to cry.

Strangers shouting verses, trying to teach you why"

It's like all this noise telling you like you're in the wrong place.

You shouldn't be there.

You don't know what's up and you're just trying to survive.

So I love that. I love the lyrics of that song.

So I took took the song

and pretty much their melody, and then I kind of harmonized it

a little bit and put a little groove behind it.

Then we started rehearsing it with the choir and there you go.

Then we got our song. That's how we do our songs.

Well, that is fantastic.

Ronald's asking

when the choir is coming to Chicago, and you and I were talking about this idea

that we need a grant from Google for a Google Bus or

that we need a tour bus.

Yes. Yes.

I would so love that.

In fact, after we kept everybody together during the pandemic

and we we got a grant for some laptops, we distributed laptops.

We taught people how to use laptops and stay engaged through Zoom meetings

and all that.

We would send out vocal parts to songs.

They'd learn them, they'd come into the studio and in a safe

COVID safe environment, record their parts one at a time.

I mean, the skills that we had to to learn to get through the pandemic.

Now that we're back together singing pre-pandemic.

We were always singing very joyfully in unison.

And I'm happy to say right now there's lots of harmony going on on stage.

So it'd be a wonderful time

to take the choir on the road and share this wall of sound.

Right? This beautiful...It's beautiful.

It's so cool. We want to come. We're coming.

I hope we have you up here for Festival Napa Valley (in the) next year or two.

It would be fantastic.

And you know, one of the other things is, like I've asked

previously, how can other people get involved? What

can $100, $500, $1,000,

$10,000 do for you and your organization?

Well, $100 actually

affords us quite a bit of time with a case manager

working with an individual or two

on a plan to get off the street.

It definitely goes into all of our programs.

I did write down though: $25, gets us five hygiene kits.

So 500 is 100 hygiene kits, which we need desperately.

We're serving like 200 folks a day.

They need shoes.

They need all sorts of things just to survive.

So those are real, practical things.

$1,000 covers our rehearsal space for a month.

The insurance involved in us being in there and everything.

Of course, we have a big dream for a big bus

so we can come to Napa and come to Chicago and.

It costs around

10,000 a month for us to run our outreach, which

we didn't have before the pandemic.

And then during the pandemic it became necessary.

People need food.

I mean, if people go to the trashcans to look for food,

or they're looking anywhere, it was gone.

It was closed.

So we were getting all these reports and calls from people that were like,

so hungry.

So this outreach that started

that also includes a phone charging station for people.

Electricity distribution, drinking water, the meals, hygiene kits and coffee.

Because what's one thing...who loves coffee?

Hello. OK.

Right up there with wine.

So we provide fresh brewed

coffee, cream and sugar, and we provide as many cups as that person wants.

And that has been the perfect relationship builder.

And it wasn't until last month we figured out

how much we were really spending and we were like...oh

my gosh, that's a lot of coffee, but it's created this perfect space

for dignity, conversation, relationship building.

And that isn't something that's provided that often for folks.

So now we got a coffee sponsor, but we still got to buy that cream

and sugar so it's expensive!

Well, you know, you're doing an amazing job

we're super excited and we hope

that our guests donate to you and we are having the lunch

for all three of you on June 10th at the the winery.

So we hope that you donate - note St.

Supéry for that.

With each $500 donation, you can have a guest.

And what a perfect holiday gift to your family

or friends to say you're coming to Napa, to celebrate

all of these wonderful organizations and all they're doing for our friends

and neighbors around the country, it's really

quite impressive,

and we hope that you join us at the winery.

You check out our everyday hero exhibit online

or at the winery, celebrating people like yourselves who are just out there,

who show up, who do good things for other people.

Because frankly, if COVID has taught us nothing, it hopefully has taught us

to recognize the joy that we have in each other

and caring for each other and being good to each other.

So I thank you for that

and I thank you all for the good work that you do.

We're going to kick off the the beautiful choir song next

and but until then, be, well, be kind.

And cheers to all of you.

Thank you.

Thank you.