Students to Step Into Shoes of Homeless Newspaper Vendors

Two local high school students are planning the Empathy Project, an initiative to raise awareness of homeless newspaper vendors on May 7, with the support of the Harvard Square Business Association.

A seller of the Spare Change Empathy Project sits in the Harvard Square T Station with his newspapers. By Lauren A. Sierra

Christy Felix and Yusef Ferhani, students at the Community Charter School of Cambridge, spearheaded the initiative. High school students around Massachusetts will sell newspapers in their towns on the one day event.

Felix and Ferhani said they conceived the project out of the senior-year internship that they completed at the Harvard Square Business Association, which has partnered with the pair’s high school to provide internship opportunities for students for seven years.

Felix and Ferhani said the project aims to put students in the shoes of vendors of Spare Change News, a local street newspaper that aims to give homeless and low-income vendors a means to earn an income.

“The public has a general view of the homeless that’s really inaccurate and it’s kind of sad. Most people just don’t understand,” Ferhani said.

Through the project, organizers hope to alert high school students to the difficulties homeless people face in earning an income. Each newspaper usually costs 35 cents and street vendors sell it for $1.00, making 65 cents per paper.

“There are many times all of us have walked by those Spare Change vendors not picking up the paper, not really paying attention, and not really understanding or appreciating how hard they work to make a living,” Denise A. Jillson, Executive Director of the Harvard Square Business Association, said.

Katherine Bennett, Executive Director of Spare Change News, said she also hopes the project will reduce a generational gap regarding awareness of the newspaper. According to Bennett, most of the organization’s outreach goes towards people over 30.

“It’s not so much that there is any sort of [generational] divide really, it is more just a lack of knowledge,” she said.

According to Jillson, Felix and Ferhani mostly led the preparations for the event, including developing the project and reaching out to local schools, while the Harvard Business Association supported them in outreach efforts.

The organizers expect about 100 students to participate in the event and hope the project will expand to other locations in the country.