Streetwise, you are killing me.

I've purchased street wise a few times, with each time not interested with the content of the magazine, but rather just giving money to the person selling it. It's like buying stickers from a blind man. You ain't doing it for the stickers.

After I buy the magazine, it sits on my desk like a piece of junk mail until I decide to throw it away.

If you're wondering what Street wise is, I copy-pasted the ABOUT section from their site:

StreetWise is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to empower men and women who currently are, or at risk of becoming homeless. StreetWise accomplishes this mission by publishing a weekly magazine which is sold to these men and women(whom we refer to as "vendors"), and they in turn sell it on the street for a profit. The publication is not a hand-out, but rather an opportunity for these vendors to become financially self-sufficient through gainful employment.

This sounds a little futile. I'm sorry, I feel like I'm criticizing the Special Olympics or something, but I just don't see the upside to this at all.  How does a vendor become self sufficient selling Streetwise? The vendors probably make barely any money. And aside from the small profit the they make, what are they learning? Streetwise is teaching people on the cusp of homelessness, the trade of being a newsie. And not just a newsie, but a newsie for  publication no one wants to read----it's like they're learning a skill somewhere between newsie and sandwich-board walker. They are the street equivalent to an online banner-ad that doesn't interest you, yet you feel a little guilty once you made eye contact with it.

What to do with you Streetwise.....Maybe try this:  Change the content!! 

No offense to the hardworking writers, but I don't want to read your article on Mayor Daley retiring when I can read it in the Trib, Sun Times, Ny Times, LA Times, HuffPost, or listen to it on NPR, etc. You see what I'm getting at. It's like if I started a sports website competing with ESPN.com----but to view my inferior site, you had to buy access from a homeless man.

This is how we change the content:

The homeless people write the magazine. Well, not actually write it....We take the current writers and make them stenographers to the creative homeless people. Articles are written. The authors (homeless people), get paid, the stenographer (former writer) gets paid, and the vendors have a magazine that is really 'streetwise.'

These articles will be real, with phonetics and all. I want to read an article by a man, with no research, talk about Mayor Daley retiring. I want to read about someone giving strong opinions about Chicago streets ("Ashland...more like Assland!"), I want a cartoon artist to draw funny pages on details that were given to him by a vietnam vet. I want a commentary section, similar to Andy Rooney (probably too similar in fact).

I would definitely buy it, and though some may tell me this is exploiting the homeless, well, I think asking them to buy then sell a bullshit magazine isn't exactly solving the problem either.