The Big Issue

I am sure you all know what the Big Issue is – the magazine that the unemployed and/or homeless sell on the streets. I didn’t previously pause to buy this publication, but in the last year or so there has been a fellow I pass as I walk to work who I find it very difficult to ignore or decline. The first time I bought a magazine from him he lit up like a Christmas tree when I stopped and we had a chat. Now he sees me coming and he gets ready and excited – and there is just no escape.

I am sure that someone somewhere has done the research on the social welfare aspects of selling this magazine, and how it is a beneficial way to encourage people to help themselves and start a small business venture and so on. And I am more than happy to support people taking this sort of initiative.

The thing is, I very rarely read it or give it more than a cursory skimming. And having studied Natural Resources Management (and perhaps for the reasons that I studied that in the first place) I loathe wasting paper. I don’t buy or take colour-printed magazines of any sort, unless I know I'll read them. So the Big Issue goes on the pile with a whole lot of other magazines that come in the mail and don’t get read either - and contributes to my war against paper. (I dug out my recycled paper-making kit last night and think I need to get it operational as one way to deal with all this stuff.) Basically, I don't want it! But it would seem wrong, and against the whole philosophy of what they are attempting, to give the fellow a donation and tell him to keep his magazine (even though that seems a win/win situation to me).

But what else to do? Has anyone else investigated the welfare benefits behind this magazine? Is there something better I could be doing than buying it? (Obviously there are plenty of things, but you know what I mean.) Should I just be donating to Anglicare, or equivalent, and taking a back street to avoid the guy with his magazines? (I'd feel better about that if I had a carefully-considered reason for not buying them.)