By Joe Tash San Diego Union Tribune
2:00 a.m. September 11, 2009
Several dozen North County homeless children and their parents will be treated to a Padres game with all the trimmings Sunday, thanks to the efforts of a San Diego real estate agency and other donors who pitched in to support the outing.
Two limo buses will pick up the group of 62 children and parents Sunday morning at North County Solutions for Change, a Vista-based homeless shelter that works with families in an effort to provide them with the skills and resources needed to get off the streets permanently.
"I don't know if they're more excited about the limo bus or the baseball game. They're just fired up; it's great," said Chris Megison, president and executive director of North County Solutions for Change.
When the outing was announced at a meeting, "the look on (the children's) faces was just priceless," Megison said. "They couldn't believe it."
The excursion was organized by HomeReach.com, a real estate agency based in San Diego's Little Italy neighborhood. David Tal, the company's principal agent and founder, said the event is part of an overall campaign to assist worthy organizations throughout the county.
Each month, volunteers organized by HomeReach.com are planning to participate in a charitable event that's connected to housing in some way, Tal said. In July, the first month of the campaign, volunteers helped build a house with Habitat for Humanity in Oceanside.
Tal said his company chose Solutions for Change after reading about the nonprofit's work on its Web site.
"Chris (Megison) was so excited when I told him what we wanted to do," Tal said. "Charities are suffering right now."
The group will sit near the third-base line at Petco Park to watch the Padres play the Colorado Rockies. The trip will include food, drinks and T-shirts for participants. All of the services have been donated, Tal said.
A Vista-based company, Global Plastic Sheeting, also is a major sponsor of the event. Several individual donors have contributed as well.
Solutions for Change is always looking for ways to bring homeless children and their parents into the mainstream of society, Megison said.
"When a kid can go to a ballgame, and sit back and have a hot dog and popcorn and in the seventh inning sing 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game,' I don't know anything more American, more mainstream than that," he said. "It puts our families out in the community in a way that says, 'We're part of this community just like anyone else.' "
The Padres event isn't the only significant contribution received recently by North County Solutions for Change. Last month, employees of Watkins Manufacturing, a spa builder in Vista, brought 20 boxes of supplies and a check for $15,000 to the homeless shelter. The donation came from Watkins' parent company, Masco Corp.
"In this day and age right now, with the recession knocking a lot of nonprofits in the kneecaps, the word 'grateful' just doesn't seem to reflect how I personally feel," Megison said about the donations. "Without these companies coming through, we can't solve homelessness for these kids and families."
http://tinyurl.com/ljwfwx - Signon San Diego
Joe Tash is a freelance writer from Oceanside.