Several months ago, Street Sense Media artist and vendor Ayub Abdul suggested to our editors that a semi-regular children’s section should be added to the paper. We asked our Writers Group what they thought about the idea:
Street Sense Media is a versatile newspaper. Vendors mainly can write about anything they want to, it doesn’t have to pertain to homelessness — which can be devastating to think back through — but we write about that, too.
Street Sense Media readers that have children, in my opinion, do a d*** good job answering their children’s questions about how some people become homeless. Instead of saying everyone is on drugs or has a mental health issue, our readers talk about the effects of job loss, high rents, and the emotional turmoil of not living in a home of your own. Most school-age children aren’t afraid to be around vendors that sell our paper.
So I do not think we should have a kids section focused on homelessness. But if it isn’t about homelessness, who’s going to write the kids’ section? I would prefer if Street Sense Media added a section to educate people who need resources or information that have language barriers, like Spanish, Russian, Italian, Arabic, etc. That way, more people could get help.
