Fox29 features RHD’s One Step Away, highlighting innovative support for people experiencing homelessness
February 16, 2018
Bill Anderson of Fox-29 featured RHD’s One Step Away and the Big Sell Off, an annual community event that brings people together to raise awareness and supports One Step Away vendors working to break the cycle of homelessness:
The hope is that the more people that feel for even a moment what homeless trying to get back on their feet deal with the more understanding we’ll be. Bill Arrowood was a guest vendor last year as well and feels like the experience definitely changes you.“One of the things you really see when you’re out here in the shoes of the guys who are out here doing it is you see how hard it is to get people’s attention and recognize you as a person.
“Even the times that I can’t help them out with food or buying a paper or reaching out to them, I know them and they know me. We see each other we make eye contact we say good morning just like neighbors do.”
RHD launched One Step Away in 2009 as a voice of advocacy and social justice, joining a worldwide movement of more than 100 street newspapers in 34 countries. With a long history of providing quality services in Philadelphia, RHD started One Step Away as an innovative way to solve gaps in social services that would help more people achieve self-sufficiency and break the cycle of homelessness. The first issue debuted on December 15, 2009.
Today more than 65 vendors each month find opportunity at One Step Away, and for 82 percent of One Step Away vendors, the street newspaper is their only source of income. In its history, One Step Away has distributed more than 700,000 issues, serving as an important voice of advocacy on issues of poverty and homelessness.