Welcome
to the 2012-13 Street Roots annual report. This past
year has been an exciting time for Street Roots, as we continue to grow as an
organization and media outlet.
At the heart of Street Roots is community. More than 300 men
and women earned a dignified income this past year with Street Roots. More than
15,000 readers engaged with those vendors on street corners and in
neighborhoods around the region.
Hope was established in the lives of people on the streets,
and the general public who believe that we have a responsibility to maintain a
healthy community. People came together across class lines, through
conversation and a newspaper. Stereotypes were shattered. Lasting relationships
were built.
Street Roots witnesses some of the most brutal and unforgiving
realities people experiencing poverty face in our region. It would be easy to
become bitter and cynical, and to just publish a newspaper that didn’t
concentrate on solutions or innovation. Both individually and collectively, we
refuse to accept defeat.
In many ways, Street Roots is that little train that could.
The amount of work the organization produces week-in and week-out, with a small
staff and a dedicated crew of volunteers baffles me at times. The human spirit
and the power of love should never be underestimated. Marry that with smart,
innovative people, strategic thinking and a willingness to change the world and
anything is possible.
Is it possible for a man to gain hope, after 25 years of
being lost and homeless, or for someone coming back from war to regain their
trust of humanity? Can a woman go from the depth of hell and domestic violence
to standing on her own two feet and providing for herself? We see it happen
every day at Street Roots.
We watch in awe at times, when readers like you come
together to pay for new dentures for a vendor, or help someone with a surgery,
or get a new pair of eyeglasses.
There’s nothing sweeter than watching a vendor get his or
her first set of house keys after years of stress, trauma and abuse. There’s
nothing more defeating that seeing another person struggle, only to die
literally, on the streets without ever being able to overcome poverty. It’s
these individual stories and relationships that drive Street Roots to do what
we do.
It is not easy being an organization that will say, or
report what others can’t or won’t. It takes its toll on the organization
financially, and sometimes politically. Saying that, Street Roots will never
waiver from doing what we feel is right based on our experience and knowledge
in the field and the hundreds of hours of research and relationship building it
takes to develop the quality journalism in the newspaper.
That’s why the support of Street Roots ultimately lies in
the reader’s hands. Since 2007, Street Roots has gone from $30,000 annually in
individual donors to nearly $100,000. That’s during the biggest recession since
the 1930s. That’s impressive and testament to the public’s support of Street
Roots and the work we are doing.
What are we doing?
Street Roots published more than 300,000 copies of the
newspaper that put an estimated $600,000 into vendor’s hands this year. Nearly
70 percent of those sales happen during the first week of our biweekly news
schedule. During the first week of sales, vendors do well. During the second
week of sales, vendors tend to scramble and are not as successful. That’s why
it remains the organizations number one objective to publish weekly. We believe
that sales of the newspaper would increase dramatically week-to-week, giving
vendors more stability in their lives to improve their quality of life.
The organization launched an organizational and news website
(news.streetroots.org) this past year. Partnering with the open-source software
community and OMBU, a local web development company — the technology industry donated more than
$100,000 of in-kind services to Street Roots to make sure we stay on the
cutting edge of technology and expand our readership statewide.
The organization continue to work towards centralizing our
internal communications and systems to improve the work we do and to streamline
the services we provide to vendors and the general public.
We added administrative, development and editorial staff. We
accomplished this through partnership with the Meyer Memorial Trust and the
Oregon Community Foundation.
We partnered with JOIN and Northwest Pilot Project, among
others. to help facilitate housing more than 50 individuals. We estimate that
we helped prevent more than 100 people from falling into homelessness.
We partnered with Precarious Egg, a local film production
company to create a 15-minute training video that gives people experiencing
poverty the tools and training they need to sell the newspaper in the
community. More than 10 vendors took the time to be part of planning and
starring in the training video.
The organization published more than 100,000 Rose City
Resource Guides, distributed to nearly 400 organizations and institutions in
the community.
We published the second annual Domicile Unknown, a report on
homeless deaths in Multnomah County, in partnership with the county health
department. We helped facilitate countless conversations about solutions to
poverty at local universities, through the media and at conferences around
North America.
Street Roots helped lead important advocacy efforts to
preserve millions of dollars for housing and homeless services through the
safety net campaign. We continue to facilitate, and be a part of a range of
proactive and innovative conversations concerning issues of poverty — ranging
from the civil liberties of people on the streets to resource development for
housing.
Street Roots continues to experiment and provide a robust
social media presence in the community, including spending 24 hours on the
streets and delivering the experience of homelessness through Twitter. We also
work weekly to highlight the voices of vendors and people on the streets
through the newspaper and social media. We are constantly working to maintain
the relationship between the public, technology and poverty.
The newspaper continues to grow and expand its coverage.
Tackling a broader range of issues related to poverty, social justice and other
taboo subject matters that you’re not going to read anywhere else. The
partnership with the International Network of Street Papers continues to grow —
working with other newspapers from around the globe to share best practices and
content.
All and all, Street Roots remains healthy. That doesn’t mean
we aren’t flying close to the treetops like every other media outlet in
Portland. Saying that, we haven’t been this strong in our 15-year history.
What’s to come?
Weekly publication remains the goal. We hope that in the
next year we are able to gain the momentum and financial support to give
vendors a stable income week-in and week-out, while becoming even more relevant
in today’s media market.
We will continue to work on developing support and to create
the best opportunities for vendors selling the newspaper — ranging from a
motivational speakers series for vendors to creating a speakers bureau.
We will continue to publish and create new, innovative
conversations in the community and through the newspaper and online. We will
continue to work toward social change and to create a better Portland. We will
also work toward expanding our reach outside Portland and statewide. We believe
Street Roots is a vehicle not just for poverty issues, but instead a platform
for quality journalism and voices from people working on social justice. A
strong Street Roots, means a strong social justice community. We will continue
to make a real difference, one newspaper and one conversation at a time.
Israel Bayer, Executive Director
This article appears in 2013-09-13.