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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 4, 2011)
4 i 4 STREET ROOTS J O ÄNNIHSE REPORT Moving forward, looking ahead ■ elcome to the 2010 Street Roots Annual Report. The past year has been a breakthrough yearfor the organization. With the great recession hammering our city, SR has become a go to for Portlanders for many different reasons. It’s easy to feel helpless, or to not understand how to help during these hard times. SR serves as an important tool that offers tangible and proactive, ways to make a difference. For people on the streets and experiencing poverty, it has become a stopgap tool to create stability and get off the streets or avoid homelessness. We’ve had people walk through our door who have been homeless for years, and others for only days — people who sell the newspaper on the weekends after working one or two . part-time jobs to maintain their housing, health care and their quality of life. From a reader perspective, SR has become an important tool in understanding and engaging in the issue. The newspaper and vendor program allow thousands of Portlanders to become proactive in the fight against poverty. Whether that’s building a relationship with someone on a street comer or becoming educated and learning how to take action through reading the newspaper. This past year, SR became more of a leader on the poverty and social justice front We led campaigns in partnership with government to start counting individuals who pass away on the street. We helped ease tensions on sidewalks through the sales of the newspaper and by creating a poster campaign to •educate panhandlers in the city. We also continue to call for a long-term revenue stream for affordable housing in our region. We exposed a group of right-wing Catholics that are driving the defunding of social justice organizations in Portland and around the country, including SR. We have helped facilitate conversations among non-traditional partners to help understand the complexities of homelessness, while never backing away from tough issues. • We are proud to be taking journalism and homeless advocacy in a new direction in our city. We believe SR is a vehicle for creating real change in our community. We believe that by offering solution-based ideas, programs and conversation, we will be able to break out of the derogatory stereotypes that have built up over the past three decades around the issue of homelessness. In short, there is hope, and together we will continue to make a difference, one newspaper at a time. “Street Roots is the definition o f a great social enterprise - a publication that tells real-life stories even as it changes peoples' lives. A s the mayor o f this great city, I am incredibly proud to count Street Roots among our community's chorus o f media voices. Keep doing what you're doing." — PORTLAND MAYOR SAM ADAMS Eddie Zuber, Street Roots vendor Sincerely, Israel Bayer Executive Director Street Boots Vendor Program M ’ore than 70 vendors buy and sell Street Roots daily in the Portland metropolitan area. Between — „ — 18,000 and 23,000 newspapers are sold each month. Street Roots served more than 400 individuals experiencing homelessness and poverty last year. Seiling the newspaper gives individuals experiencing homelessness and poverty immediate income, while helping improve people’s quality of Kfe. While the income generated from the sales of the newspaper is an important and vital component of the vendor pro g ram '-it also gives many individuals the ability to connect with the larger community and build relationships with readers, supporters and businesses. By creating a path to self sufficiency, including skill development, resume building and fostering self-respect and a sense of personal worth, we are making a difference in the lives of people on the streets. In 2010, Street Roots opened a satellite office with our community partners at JOIN in East Portland, and helped create income for individuals that haven’t traditionally had access to Street Roots. Ih e move also allowed the organization to streamline individuals selling the newspaper to have access to the supportive services they need, including getting housing. In 2010, Street Roots, with the help of community partners, connected hundreds of individuals with housing, employment, recovery and health care resources, case management and so many other building blocks toward security. Just as important, the organization helped another prevent approximately 150 individuals from becoming homeless. Street Roots is proud to he facilitating dialogue between the larger community and people experiencing homelessness and poverty on street comers throughout the cily. Both through the vendor program and the newspaper, we continue to change the way the region thinks and acts on the issue of homelessness. From all the vendors at Street Roots, we thank you for your support. few year brings new opportunities , ...... men z___ AnntiniiAfi tn Our circulation continues to in uniform. ith every edition, Street Roots seeks to rise each year, just as the number of vendors reconnect journalism with one of its increases with each passing month, both founding principles of empowering indicators of the times we live in. The world is people with the knowledge and understanding to awash with information about social justice and make a difference in their world. We can only do that on the strength and poverty, and there are a hundred ways to access diversity of a hundred or so volunteers, including it. Street Roots works to provide both context the members of our Editorial Committee, our and the opportunity for people to overcome writers, photographers and copyeditors» All of Complacency, get involved and create change. We them have a hand in making Street Roots better will be doing that not just through the with each passing season, as do the hundreds of, newspaper, but also with a new website that will vendors who take each , edition the extra mile. expand our coverage in news and commentary, In 2010, we received three first-place awards and provide new ways readers and writers can and a third-place award from the Society of get involved. y Professional Journalists Oregon-Washington We’re not content to say this isas good as it Chapter, and we were honored with an award for gets. That’s not our style. We are excited about our journalism from the North American Street the coming year and what it will bring, and we Newspaper Association. Street Roots is finding more readers by hope to share it with you with every edition of investing in our journalism, diversifying our Street Roots. Thank you for that opportunity. coverage with new columnists, and expanding our pool of talented writers — on and off the Joanne Zuhl streets — to keep Street Roots as the unique, / 2 S B S must-have source for news and perspective in Portland. Among them is a new column by Portland Police Officer Robert Pickett, who talks W
