The Thunderbird Gazette

One of the cool things I dis­covered this past Sat­urday at Media Demo­cracy Day is Mega­phone, a Van­couver street paper sold by low-income and home­less vendors that provides a voice for people on the Down­town Eastside.

Street papers are a grow­ing move­ment. Accord­ing to Sean Con­don, Editor-in Chief of Mega­phone, there are over 100 street papers world­wide. The first was cre­ated in New York in 1989 when someone came up with the idea of print­ing a paper to be sold by home­less people as a means of employ­ment. It worked and now there are a num­ber of street papers all over the world in both developed and devel­op­ing coun­tries that not only provide employ­ment to low-income and home­less indi­vidu­als, but also fre­quently provide them with a voice.