A CHARITABLE trust launched by a popular singer songwriter from Penarth has raised nearly £50,000 in its first year.

Martyn Joseph fulfilled a long-held ambition to launch his own trust to benefit both global charities and grass roots people projects in the UK and beyond with legendary broadcaster Bob Harris becoming patron.

Named after one of his recent songs on the Songs for the Coming Home album, the 'Let Yourself Trust' launched in the UK last June with three special fundraising performances over one weekend in Cardiff, Milton Keynes and Lancaster.

To mark the launch Martyn released an 11-track album 'Kiss the World Beautiful – Songs for the Let Yourself Trust' with fresh recordings of some of his most affecting political and social justice songs and a striking new song Luxury of Despair, inspired by his recent visits to refugee camps.

Setting out to “provide a choice and a chance” Let Yourself Trust aims to support lesser known projects each year for a six month period, highlighting their work to a wider audience through Martyn’s gigs and social networks.

Songwriter Martyn, who has been dubbed “The Welsh Springsteen”, has campaigned both in person and in song for countless causes, focusing on trade justice, third world debt cancellation and human rights. His high impact songs range from a first person narrative from the perspective of a Kosovo refugee (The Good in Me is Dead) to Five Sisters, recounting the fate of siblings killed in an Israeli attack.

It was a 2013 trip to Bethlehem for the Bet Lahem festival and in particular a visit to a children’s theatre project at a Palestinian refugee camp that triggered the formation of the Let Yourself Trust.

“My trip to the Middle East galvanised my thoughts on something I’d been thinking about for the last five years. I’d always been proud and privileged to lend my support to many causes during the length of my career – but I wanted to do something more and set up a visible platform alongside the music. Somewhere in the heat and dust of a Palestinian refugee camp I decided it was time to set up my own charitable trust to help fund projects at home and abroad that are making a difference in their communities.”

That led to the Alroward Cultural and Theatre Society in Bethlehem’s Aida Refugee Camp becoming the first funding project and the $10,000 money LYT raised through concerts and generous donations helped deliver a range of creative tools from musical instruments to digital cameras, books and paint brushes to the Alroward Children Arts Theatre.

In the second half of 2014 LYT turned its attentions to Guatemala’s Project Somos Children’s Village. Martyn met Project Somos’ founders (Heather and Greg Knox) at the Vancouver Folk Festival 15 years ago and has since supported their vision to set up a home for single mothers and their children suffering extreme poverty and the nurturing of their futures.

Martyn visited Project Somos at the start of 2015 to present a LYT cheque for $32,000 and performed a private concert for the village’s mothers, children and staff- the first they had experienced.

See Martyn’s introduction to the Let Yourself Trust and Bob Harris’s personal message at www.letyourself.net