CALENDAR SALES EMPLOYMENT PLAN
More people trained, more ‘depots’ to support sellers

Bags of Hope

Over 180 licensed sellers were trained by December 5 and can be seen on the streets with distinctive bright blue new bags and caps. Photo Marcin Lasinska.

As well as more people being trained and new calendar depots to support sellers, HOPE IN SHADOWS is providing sellers with new calandar bags.

Last year’s successful doubling of street sales of the hope in shadows calendar has enabled a lot of early planning for this year, says coordinatorPaul Ryan.

Since HOPE IN SHADOWS was established in 2003 there have been many reasons for its success, but surely the most important has been the benefit to the people who sell the calendar on the streets of Vancouver.

The amount of money earned by the sellers for themselves increased from $23,000 in 2005 to over $50,000 in 2006, and the number of people trained increased by 50 percent. Last year 180 people were trained in 25 sessions in seven locations (two in 2005) and we expect to increase the number of training locations again this year, with 180 people trained by December 5 and two sessions to go.

The training locations, usually community centres, are chosen to try to get as many different people as possible. They could be homeless youth who don’t even visit the Downtown Eastside (the Gathering Place on Seymour) or women who don’t like bumping into ex-boyfriends at a unisex community centre, or just prefer the option of an all-women training session (the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre).

This year’s new depots where sellers can stock up on calendars include The UPS Store in the Sinclair Centre, the Vancity Credit Union branch on Commercial Drive and Cuppa Joe's on East Broadway and Main Street.

This year training began in early October, with two special three-hour training sessions on October 10, the day before the launch. Training of sellers normally takes an hour and is carried out by a team of volunteers. The session begins with everyone having their photograph taken. While the main trainer runs the session, volunteers download the headshots to a file on a laptop with a template of ID cards. The ID not only has the person’s photo and name, but the official license number from the City of Vancouver and a list of the depots the sellers can restock at. After the cards are printed out, they are cut up, signed and then laminated.

At the end of the session, people head out with the ID and a calendar and promotional materials under their arms.

Paul Ryan has been the coordinator of HOPE IN SHADOWS since April 2005.

This article is from the HOPE IN SHADOWS newsletter Snapshot. To downoad the pdf of Snapshot, click here (417 KB)