Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

Hi - thanks so much for supporting the street newz.  We’ve spent the $1500 you so generously provided, and we’re sending a report to let you know what we did with it. We appreciate your help very much …

The Victoria Street Newz is one of the projects the PSAC Social Justice Fund is supporting: here is a letter they recently sent to the SJF.

Thank you for your generous donation of $1,500 tax dollars to help cover production costs for the Victoria Street Newz.

With each issue, from February 2006 to June 2007, the PSAC logo and/or advertisement was displayed prominently in the newspaper and on the relativenewz.ca website.

The Victoria Street Newz is now entering its fourth year. We’re very grateful to all the organizations and individuals who have supported us thus far. Because of your generosity we are able to maintain our integrity. Rather than surrendering valuable print space to excessive advertising, or increasing the cost to vendors and readers, the Victoria Street Newz is able to ensure a comprehensive collection of community writings is available at a reasonable price. With help from the community we serve, we will continue to sustain our local environment by reflecting, showcasing, informing, and educating.

Additionally, we serve and sustain our local physical environment by printing on 100% post consumer recycled paper, rather than paper extracted from our precious forests. While we are forced to invest our print dollars in Vancouver, because of a lack of recycled print options in Victoria, we make an effort to distribute all other monetary resources within our local community. The Street Newz coordinator is paid $700 a month, works from her home office, rents a mailbox and phone answering service from locally owned Raincoast Business Centre, and meets with vendors at the locally owned Solstice Café - which serves locally owned Silk Road tea and Canadian owned fairly traded organic coffee, and which serves the community by offering its space to local groups for benefits.

We participate in BC Transit’s bus ticket purchasing project, in conjunction with the Community Council, and distribute free bus tickets to Street Newz writers, vendors, and volunteers.

Through the years we’ve published information about and from various local organizations and businesses including the Community Council, the Open Door/Our Place, the Oak Bay Green Committee, Parents of Apprehended Children, HomelessNation.org, Participatory Sustainable Waste Management, Victoria’s Committee to End Homelessness, the Faith in Action Coalition, Bridges for Women, Sukhi Lalli Pharmacy, Chinese Herbalist Dr. John, InnovativeCommunities.org, St. Vincent De Paul, Burnside Gorge Community Centre, Cool Aid, Vancouver Island Head Injury Society, TAPS, Access Justice, CARTS, the Downtown Victoria Business Association, the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, Livable Income for Everyone, street artists, musicians, poets, and writers. Archived versions of the newspaper are available on-line at relativenewz.ca.

To sustain ourselves in the future, we’re launching a creative fundraising effort in the form of volume subscriptions. In exchange for $600 subscribers will receive 18 copies of Street Newz, delivered monthly, for a year. We’ll also include a complete set of Street Newz for your library - back issues from the previous three + years of publishing. Alternatively, we’d be interested in completing another grant application and/or continue offer advertising space to PSAC. Either way, we thank you for your support.

Namaste, Janine Bandcroft, Coordinator, Victoria Street Newz