The Jeepney Magazine: Helping Others Help Themselves

Poverty remains an issue in the Philippines and, despite the development goals laid out by the government, the country has not been able to sustain the economic growth required to reduce poverty to acceptable levels. Here's a great idea that Mr. & Mrs. Shaw came up with. It's 'a hand up, not a hand out' philosophy and street papers like the The Jeepney Magazine may help the poor get out of the cycle of poverty.

The first street paper in the Philippines, The Jeepney Magazine is published by Urban Opportunities for Change Foundation, Inc, a non-profit foundation organized to provide social awareness and opportunity to people trapped in poverty. According to their site, The Jeepney Magazine has two main goals:

The first is the presentation of the stories and hearts of the Filipino poor. It is our intent to communicate the needs, struggles and more importantly, the victories in the midst of those struggles, of homeless people, to an audience that can make change happen.

The second is the provision of jobs, with dignity, meeting or exceeding the Philippine minimum wage. The provision of jobs, is modeled by the over two hundred autonomous street papers in the world today. The vendors of these papers receive fifty to ninety percent of the papers cover price.

The Jeepney Magazine sells for a street price of one hundred pesos. The vendor receives fifty pesos. Twenty-five pesos goes toward printing and twenty-five pesos are used for production costs, vendor training and vendor oversight. The goal is for each of the vendors to sell a minimum of ten magazines a day, giving them an income exceeding, by forty percent, the Philippine minimum wage.

Street papers are a new idea for Asia. They have proven themselves in Europe, North and South America, Africa and Australia, as a viable method of poverty alleviation. The Jeepney is the first street paper among Asian's developing countries.

Here's a video clip of The Jeepney Magazine featured in the Probe Team of ABS-CBN.



"When you buy a street paper. You do much more than contribute to the vendor's chances of escaping homelessness. You are helping finance a support system for many more excluded people, something that giving spare change to a beggar simply does not do." - BBC

Get involved! Click on the link below for information on subscription and donation of the magazine.

I Want to Help via The Jeepney Magazine