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The Homeless Empowerment Project, a non-profit organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts, publishes Spare Change News. It is a street newspaper that focuses on local poverty, homelessness, and other related issues. We are the voice of the voiceless, and advocate where we are able. Besides the content of the paper, we directly help homeless and low income communities, by recruiting them to become vendors and sell our paper.

Spare Change News was started by a small group of homeless people in 1992.
Street papers are an international movement: www.street-papers.org. They provide bona-fide jobs and an opportunity for earning an income despite tremendous barriers to employment.
Our vendors purchase copies of Spare Change News for 25 cents and sell them for $1 on the streets, earning them a 75-cent profit. (Their first ten copies are free once they sign up.)

We also provide a vehicle for talented writers, poets, illustrators, and photographers to express their experiences with homelessness and poverty in our Voices from the Street section. The rest of paper content focuses on local poverty and homeless issues but also has broader national, international and arts coverage provided by volunteer contributors.

Our other program is the Speakers Bureau, through which homeless and formerly homeless vendors speak at local schools, churches and organizations about their life experiences.

To get involved, please call us at 617-497-1595. We'd love to hear from you!