FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Washington, D.C. (Oct. 4, 2017) — A nonprofit organization in the nation’s capital will soon be employing a high-tech solution to ending homelessness. On Oct. 11, Street Sense Media will publicly launch a cashless payment app that allows customers to purchase print newspapers from the organization’s homeless vendors.
For the last 14 years, men and women in Washington, D.C. have relied on the income they earn from selling the Street Sense Media newspaper to work their way out of homelessness. Recently, however, these vendors have experienced a decline in income as fewer of their potential customers carry cash. So, the organization reached out to Vancouver-based developer Denim & Steel Interactive, which last year created—and open-sourced—a cashless payment app for Canadian street paper Megaphone Magazine.
The Street Sense Media App is the result of long hours of creative problem solving to overcome unique challenges, beginning with overcoming the distrust of unfamiliar technology by the homeless vendors themselves.
“We understood that financial precarity makes vendors especially vulnerable to changes in the current system that they, and their customers, were used to,” Denim and Steel wrote. “For vendors, cash transactions mean day-to-day certainty, and anything that got in the way of that was cause for concern. But they also knew that fewer people carrying cash meant lower sales, and gave us our chance to show that this could work.”
The hope is that the app will reach beyond Vancouver and Washington. By open-sourcing the project, Denim & Steel has made the app available to the more than 130 street paper organizations across the world.
“Our mission to end homelessness depends on our ability to share share with the community the stories of those living without permanent housing,” said Street Sense Media Executive Director Brian Carome. “This new cashless payment app seeks to ensure that our newspaper reaches as many people as possible and that our vendors are maximizing their earning potential.”
The Street Sense Media App is currently available in the App Store and on Google Play. On Oct. 11, the organization will publicly introduce the app in a press event in which D.C. Councilmember David Grosso will make honorary first purchases. The event will begin at 3:30 p.m. ET at Freedom Plaza in downtown Washington.
For more information, contact Street Sense Media Communications Manager Jeff Gray at 202-347-2006 (x15) or [email protected].
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