Tag: homelessness

November 10, 2019

Accumulate

The first graphic novel created by homeless people is being crowdfunded.

Homelessness charity Accumulate are trying to raise £17,800 to release The Book of Homelessness next June.

The Big Issue are telling the story of former vendor Rae McKinlay with a mini-graphic novel – and if you like what you see then there could be more on the way.

Charity Accumulate are also putting together a visual story, what they are dubbing the “world’s first-ever graphic novel created by people affected by homelessness”.

The Book of Homelessness is pencilled in to be released in June 2020, taking in the drawings, texts, visuals and poems created by homeless people in Accumulate workshops from January.

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October 7, 2019

Latics

Oldham Athletic have vowed to become first homeless friendly football club.

The League Two side will host an information point for homeless people at the stadium and write about homelessness in their programme as part of work with charity Homeless-Friendly.

Football clubs can do so much to tackle homelessness – and that has been exemplified by Oldham Athletic’s vow to become the first professional club to be homeless friendly.

The League Two football club have teamed up with charity Homeless-Friendly to create an information point for homeless people at their Boundary Park ground, showing people where they can access medical care and support services.

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September 11, 2019

iZettle

The Big Issue goes cashless with the help of iZettle.

Big Issue vendors across the UK will now have access to cashless technology, thanks to our partnership with tech innovators iZettle.

Cashless payments now far outweigh cash transactions, with one in five Brits ditching notes and coins entirely, while tapping a card against a reader accounted for 5.6 billion payments last year.

That means Big Issue vendors, working hard for a living across the country, were financially excluded by only accepting cash. We have seen that reality take hold in recent times so that’s why we decided to do something about it.

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July 8, 2019

Accumulate

NFL star visits photography workshop for young homeless people in London.

American Football ace Giovani Bernard of Cincinnati Bengals joins charity Accumulate for a photography workshop in London. He tells The Big Issue how photography could be a route out of poverty for the participants – just as football was for him.

NFL ace Giovani Bernard took time out ahead of pre-season training with the Cincinnati Bengals to lead a photography workshop with youth homelessness charity Accumulate.

The star Running Back is a keen photographer, and during a trip to London with NFL UK, he visited the Nomadic Gardens community space in Shoreditch to meet a group of young people with experience of homelessness and share his expertise and life story.

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May 19, 2019

The Game

How a Facebook group is using the Wetherspoons app to feed homeless people.

One night in Salisbury, £260 of food and (non-alcoholic) drinks were bought by strangers from all over the UK and internationally.

Wetherspoons has an app that allows customers to skip queuing at the bar to order food and drink. It also means you can play pranks, sending orders of peas or Fruit Shoots to any table of your choice at one of around 900 ’Spoons across the UK.

Chris Illman from Fareham formulated Wetherspoons The Game! and founded a page for it on Facebook. The idea is simple: people post a picture of themselves and their table number and wait for fellow group members to send them stuff – anything at all. Last week’s players included Tiffany turning 21 at The Swan in Weymouth, a hen party at The Panniers in Barnstaple and someone celebrating the loss of their virginity, allegedly, at The Manor House in Royston.

But among the rowdy revellers was a post from The Standing Ordr in Southampton which asked people to donate food that would be distributed to people rough sleeping nearby.

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May 1, 2019

The Right to Shower

This new brand from Unilever is donating 100% of its profits in 2019 to bring mobile shower units to homeless communities.

Drugstore aisles are filled with an abundance of bath and body products. You can choose what body wash you’d like based on price, scents, ingredients, brand loyalty, or just pretty packaging. Many of us take the fact that we can make these choices — and the fact that we can shower at all — for granted.

The fact is, for the 550,000 homeless individuals in the United States, cleanliness and personal hygiene aren’t guarantees. The Right to Shower, a brand recently launched by Unilever, is bringing attention to this issue by launching a line of basic bath products, and donating 100 percent of its profits in 2019 to mobile shower initiatives.

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April 9, 2019

Radio station for the homeless

UK charity launches first ever radio station for the homeless.

The radio station will train 40 young homeless people to digitally broadcast their stories, operate a radio desk and present, record and edit digital podcasts.

A youth homelessness charity has secured funding to launch the UK’s first ‘Radio Station for the Homeless’.

The charity Accumulate received the startup funding from Nesta as a part of its Amplified programme designed to encourage creative digital ideas that generate positive social outcomes.

The project is the brainchild of Marice Cumber, founder of Accumulate, who wanted homeless people to be more involved in programming about homelessness.

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March 22, 2019

Pret House scheme

Pret A Manger is offering homeless people a roof and a job.

The sandwich chain is aiming to help 20 people off the streets by the end of the year with the launch of their new Pret House scheme.

Many a sandwich and a cup of tea has been bought from one of their stores to give to rough sleepers but now Pret A Manger is offering more to Britain’s homeless – a home and a job.

The sandwich shop chain has teamed up with homelessness charity West London Mission St Luke’s (WLM) to set up The Pret House offering a spot on their Rising Stars programme as well as accommodation.

Pret’s Rising Stars programme, run by The Pret Foundation for a decade, gives 40 jobs at the firm to ex-homeless people every year – a crucial step in providing the stability to break the cycle of homelessness for good.

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March 12, 2019

Get Digital

Get Digital Scotland will “open digital doors” for homeless people.

The new digital inclusion campaign launches creating 250 ‘digital champions’ to ensure vulnerable people aren’t left behind in digital age.

A new digital inclusion initiative has recently launched in Scotland to give homeless people the computer skills “other take for granted”.

Two of Scotland’s leading homelessness charities Streetwork and Simon Community Scotland unveiled Get Digital after receiving a £250,000 grant from the Scottish government to create ‘digital champions’.

This will see 250 workers from the two charities receive training to provide support to people experiencing homelessness in learning digital skills and engaging with the digital world.

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February 17, 2019

Take One Leave One

This community ‘take one leave one’ initiative is fighting the cold snap.

The founder hopes his clothes rail move will spark others to set up their own initiative.

As temperatures drop across the country a new community-led initiative has launched in a bid to help rough sleepers keep warm during the cold snap.

#TakeOneLeaveOne launched in January 29 at London’s Exmouth Market, offering coats, scarves, gloves and blankets to anyone who needs them.

Rails and baskets can be found outside the Holy Redeemer church and ‘pledge cards’ for services at local businesses are available offering laundry services, food and hot drinks and haircuts.

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