Volunteers with the Storefront Shelter hit the streets in San Diego trying to convince kids to come to its shelter. And for some kids that trip to the shelter is the first step to creating a new life. Karen Rostodha has the story.
Walking a mile in Oscar Arciniega's shoes would mean taking on a journey that's been filled with challenges and heartache. Losing both parents as a child and struggling to survive on his own.
Oscar Arciniega, Artist: "Well the hardest thing is that I've never really gotten to know my dad. I was like seven, when I try to picture it, it's kind of hard. And then the family fell apart when my mom passed away, she was the head of the family so it was really hard."
Born in San Diego, Oscar grew up in Mexico. After his parents died he found himself living in an abusive environment with two older siblings.
Rostodha: "Tell me how your life has changed in the past year."
Arciniega: "Well in the summer it was kind of rough in my house so I decided to leave and cross come to the U.S. and look for help. I wasn't really thinking about running away but coming to the U.S. and looking for help."
Rostodha: "How rough was it when you got to the U.S. with no place to live?"
Arciniega: "Well I felt really scared and nervous first and then the police helped me out and then they took me to Storefront."
For the past five months Oscar has been living at the Storefront, San Diego's only emergency shelter for homeless, abused, and runaway teens. Director Jan Stankus-Nakano says on any given day there are nearly 2000 kids living on the streets in San Diego. The Storefront offers counseling, a safe place to stay and much more.
Jan Stankus-Nakano, Storefront Center Director: "As much as teenagers like to push, they love to have the expectations that an adult can give them. Somebody to encourage them to go to school, somebody to respect what they are doing, somebody to recognize when they've excelled, someone to give them opportunities to grow, to show them that there are other ways besides drugs, without self-harming themselves."
Oscar is one of 20 youth living in the shelter. Some teens stay a day, others longer.
Arciniega: "It's kind of hard, because people come and go. They can stay for one day and or for two days, and you won't see them again for a month, so it's kind of hard to make friends also. And you know it's kind of a harsh environment sometimes but I have a lot of friends. The staff members, they've been helping me a lot, Nikyta especially, the art teacher."
Nikyta Palmisani, Art Therapy Intern: "These are often people with no voice and I think art is one of the strongest tools that we have to have a voice."
Nikyta Palmisani uses art as therapy to help the teens cope.
Palmisani: "Theater, dance, writing, visual arts, music, it's whatever media is going to be best for the client."
Palmisani says Expressive Art Therapy encourages emotional healing through a creative process.
Palmisani: "Here at the Storefront often the teens are in crisis situations, or they are in the dire straits. So by moving away from the problem and by moving into the realm of the imaginable into the imagination, right, any image can come forward and images almost always come for people's benefit."
For Oscar, who had never painted before, the art has ignited a new passion.
Arciniega: "First I thought of art, like it's boring I don't want to do it. Then when I got into painting during those days I was really stressed with work, with my schoolwork and my family, and so I said, 'Well, I'm going to try it out.'"
Rostodha: "Now this one, it says 'why is the sky blue,' 'dream,' 'triumph over ordinary' - this has got to be personal."
Arciniega: "Yeah. In this one I want to give a message like, 'broaden your minds, open up your mind, think about something else, dream, give yourself the chance to look for something else.'"
The Expressive Art program gives these teens a respite from the serious issues they struggle with, issues that make them grow up fast.
Justine Bethel, Artist: "Like up here I'm like 35, down here I'm like 16."
Justine Bethel says she started having problems after her parents divorced and she fell in with a bad crowd.
Bethel: "Actually I was on the streets once for a month straight and that was when I got taken into storefront."
Rostodha: "How did you do that for a month?"
Bethel: "I don't know. I can't even remember what was going on half the time because I was on something, most of the time."
Rostodha: "And you were how old?
Bethel: "I was 15, it was only a year ago."
Since being at the storefront, Justine has tapped into the artistic side she never knew she had.
Bethel: "It's about how it makes you feel, how much you put into it, how much you can like take something that's in here and put it on there and how people can also see it, see what you're seeing."
Palmisani says she's seen Justine blossom from a troubled teen into a creative young lady.
Palmisani: "She was a very tough, gothic, very dark, very depressed when she came in, very sharp like sharp glass, but incredibly artistic. I remember specifically with Justine the day that I told her, you could be an artist for a living."
Bethel: "She's very supportive and very positive. She doesn't say, 'Oh that's ugly, why don't you try doing this?' She lets you do anything and lets you bring it in any direction that you want with art."
Justine is no longer living on the streets and has been reunited with her mother.
Bethel: "I want them to know that I'm not just some little punk teenager that runs around in the streets doing drugs and drinking alcohol; that I'm a person. I feel really strong emotions and I've gone through a lot, and that just because I'm young doesn't mean I'm not as mature as anybody else."
Palmisani: "Art-making not only is a vehicle to de-stress, but then also is a self-reflective, what is it that is manifesting in your artwork? Why was it that Oscar, when we were working with him, how come you'd manifest flowers over and over? What do flowers have to do with you?"
Arciniega: "They remind me of my parents because it was something basic that we had in our house, a rose bush, so it reminds me of my parents and my family."
Oscar just turned 18, has a part time job, is preparing to graduate from high school, and plans to study medicine in college.
Palmisani: "If I can change one life at a time, I might not be fixing the entire program, who knows in their social circle if they might say 'hey, you're homeless,' or 'hey I know this great place, go check out Nikyta, the art really changed me.'"
Justine and Oscar can now add professional artist to their resumes. The Little Italy gallery Mixture is donating gallery space to show their work. The local organization Photocharity fully funds the Expressive Art program by selling donated guitars that are signed by celebrities like B.B. King who recently signed seven guitars. All the proceeds go to shelter programs.
