Charity concert makes music for Manna
Four months, six bands and one potential Eagle Scout was all it took to raise 1,421 cans for Manna Food Bank. On Sept. 22, around 200 people attended the Five For Live benefit concert at the Thousand Oaks Teen Center. The event featured student bands from around the area and had an admissions fee of five canned goods. For Ryan Younes, junior and eagle scout candidate, inspiration struck when he attended a similar event the year before.
“I was thinking, ‘Wow, if I could run something like this for my Eagle Project that I have seen some other guys in other troops do, that would be the coolest thing ever,’” Younes said.
Conceptualizing the idea in September of last year, Younes started planning it four months before the concert, in June. In that time he had to find and secure six bands, book a venue and more.
Before the concert, Younes also planned three restaurant fundraisers and received donations of money and food from local grocery stores like Ralphs, Trader Joe’s and Sprouts. All of the proceeds and donations from the concert are being donated directly to Manna Food Bank.
“You need very good communication with whoever’s doing the event,” Younes said. “You have to have the bands, the venue and the beneficiary all in perfect harmony with one another.”
When planning the music, as a fellow guitar player himself, Younes knew some of the bands and hand picked each one himself, having “seen every single one live, somewhere, at some show. I knew they were good; I wanted them here.”
The list of performers included Sik Sik Sicks, Stereo Fidelity, Permission to Fly, Pushing Veronica, My Native Tongue and Let’s Get Out of This Horrible Sandwich Shoppe. When Maddie Lucas, sophomore from Century Academy and singer from Sik Sik Sicks, was approached by Younes to perform, she and her band immediately said yes, even though they had only been together for six months.
“We decided to perform tonight because it’s for a good cause, it’s with our besties: Pushing Veronica and Stereo Fidelity. It sounded really fun,” Lucas said.
It was the same reason why Jason Peters, senior, attended the concert.
“I think it is a good event,” Peters said. “Concerts are really fun…(and) Manna food drive is a really good way to tie it in.”
For the concert, Younes had help from close to 50 people, involving his boy scout troop, the Music Production Club as well as his friends and family, and said that the event would not be possible without all of the volunteers. But, volunteer Zak Logie, junior, said his favorite part of the night was “just seeing the amount of enthusiasm that Ryan has for this.”
