Big Issue vendors hit the superhighway

The Big Issue's Brighton office is a pretty chaotic affair - broken chairs, old posters and evidence all around of the difficult circumstances that the magazine's vendors are forced to endure.

Message boards tell fragmentary, sometimes heartbreaking stories - pleas for old friends that have been lost on the road to get in touch, descriptions of much-loved dogs that have gone walkabout and so on.

But it's also a place that has moved with the times, and vendors can now charge their mobile phones (for many, the only means of contact) for just 10p.

The digital age arrived in the Big Issue office a year ago when it launched the Help Us Be Successful (Hubs) initiative to a fanfare of publicity. A suite of computers, which is part-sponsored by Sun Microsystems and the UK government, and administered by the Sussex Community Internet Project, was set up at the Brighton base with the intention of moving homeless vendors online for the first time.

A laptop-based mobile teaching system that could be accessed using wireless modems was also introduced, the aim being to provide people in disadvantaged communities with a taste of digital culture.

The project is now thriving and the experiment is being rolled out in other centres around the UK, with Big Issue vendors packing out the computer room, keeping in touch with friends by email and using CDRom-based tutors. Such technology gives them a chance to play and learn at the same time.

As a result, some are finding college places, and one enterprising vendor is even building his own fair trade ecommerce venture.

Reducing isolation
"They love it!" said Emma Stephens, the Big Issue's educational projects co-ordinator. "When you've been excluded from society and you don't have access to the things that Joe Public has access to, the more isolated you feel."

"A couple of years ago, there was a bit of a feeling that if you didn't know about computers, then you weren't part of the world. You would never get a job, you'd never be taken seriously, you'd be a second class citizen," she added.

But while training might appear an obvious route to some, it is not as easy as it sounds for many homeless people.

"A lot of the vendors are chaotic," Stephens explained. "They tend not to get on very well in a strict and routine-like learning environment, so we run drop-in classes three times a week and it gives people a chance to come in and learn when they can."

One vendor was understandably enthusiastic about the project: "I've been on H [heroin] since I was 14 and living in squats, which isn't so brilliant. Thing is, you need an address, don't you, before you can get on a college course or anything? I've got an email address now. Next thing's some regular work and [then to] get my own place. Get off the stuff."

A safe haven
"While their immediate problems in housing, or drug or alcohol abuse are being sorted out, at least we can help them to gain a bit of confidence in a friendly, learning environment," said Stephens. "When things start to slot into place for them, at least they aren't miles behind."

"The main problem is a lack of self-esteem, a lack of confidence," she continued. "People who are homeless often have a whole big bag of problems, which really have to be sorted out in their own time, and at their own pace. The world of being homeless and on the street can be an extremely vicious place - you look out for yourself. But this space gives them a chance to forget all about that. There's something very magical about the whole thing."

"We have a young girl, who is only about 20 or something. She made an email friend in a chat room. He was an elderly gentleman who'd just lost his wife. They sat all afternoon chatting to each other on email about stuff. So many things would stop those people from meeting in real life, but they realised they had a lot to share," she added.

Success stories like this are not unusual at Hubs. "We've just started one guy at college this year," said Stephens. "We knew he had some draughtsman and art skills, [but] he'd got into trouble with graffiti painting. He learned some graphics packages on the computer and we helped him with building up a portfolio."

The Pitch
The next big project for Stephens and Hubs co-ordinator Adam Clamp is a Big Issue Brighton web page called The Pitch, which will be hosted by South Coast arts website Seelife (www.seelife.brighton.co.uk) to provide vendors with their own voice on the web.

Early plans include using digital cameras to put a streamed video on the site entitled 'A day in the life of a Big Issue seller'. But what would a website give the homeless that the magazine doesn't?

Stephens explained: "The Big Issue magazine is written by journalists for the general public and the only thing vendors identify with is the 'street lights' pages, the poetry and maybe 'vendor of the week'. Everything else is totally out of our hands. The website will be the vendors' writing and not the voice of the Big Issue Foundation. We have to make that very distinct - the vendors have their own views. It'll be billed as Big Issue Brighton."

Big Issue vendor 'Geezer' is the project's first volunteer. He sorts out problems, keeps the room humming and occasionally mediates in squabbles.

"I like computers because you can question. You can ask. In the office of today, you get a Scouser who's been on a council estate all his life sitting next to a guy that's got a BMW and stuff that his mummy's bought him. Now they work together in an office - and maybe the Scouser's earning more money! It's a social leveller," he explained.

"What I want to do now is set up a sanctuary for the Harajan children of India. Gandhi called them "the children of God". These are the most oppressed children in the world, because of the caste system," said Geezer."I want to open up a computer centre in the Himalayan Mountains for these so-called 'untouchable' children. What a way to start a life. We can empower them to go out and get work - they've got the alternative Silicon Valley out there," he explained.

Geezer is now planning to set up his own website. "I'm going out to India to visit shopkeepers and say to them: 'Can I take pictures of your stock?'. I've got a digital camera and I'm going to email pictures to my friends all over the world, who will help sell the stuff," he said."The shopkeepers will become wholesalers. Then I can get the money together to buy computers to help the children, and I can have a really chilled out lifestyle as well at the same time!" he added.

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