The Homeless Empowerment Project, a non-profit organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts, publishes Spare Change News. This publication - one of the world's first street newspapers - focuses on local poverty, homelessness, and other related issues. Spare Change offers both voice and opportunity to persons experiencing homelessness and other forms of economic disadvantage. In addition to the advocacy enacted by content of the paper, we offer social and economic opportunities in the form of self-employment, skill development, and peer support.
Spare Change News was started by a small group of homeless people in 1992. While it was not the first street newspaper - earlier publications were founded in New York City and San Francisco - Spare Change is the first known paper to be founded by people who themselves were homeless.
Street papers are now part of nationwide, as well as international movements for self-empowerment: www.nasna.org; www.street-papers.org.
Upon enrollment, new vendors are given ten free copies of Spare Change News. Subsequently, vendors purchase copies of Spare Change for 25 cents and sell them for $1 on the street, keeping all proceeds for themselves.
Through the publication, as well as through our website, we provide a vehicle for talented writers, poets, illustrators, and photographers to express their experiences with homelessness and poverty. We also host a platform for social and professional networking on our virtual vendor pages (www.sparechangenews.net/vendors). While the content of Spare Change is most concerned with news surrounding poverty and homelessness in the area local to Greater Boston, coverage of other social issues is also prioritized.
The Homeless Empowerment Project pays economically disadvantaged contributors stipends for their published works through our Writers' Fund. Additionally, we convene a Speakers Bureau, through which homeless and formerly homeless persons receive contracts to speak at local schools, churches and organizations about their life experiences.
For inquiries about our programs or about advertising in Spare Change, please email director@sparechangenews.net. For inquiries about volunteering, write to volunteer@sparechangenews.net.
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