The Street Spirit Publication

Street Spirit is a publication documenting Justice News and Homeless Blues in the Bay Area. It is a partnership between American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS). Below is information on both agencies.

If you would like to read stories and poems from the Street Spirit publication via our website, please click here. To visit Street Spirit's website which includes all articles and stories please, go to their website at http://www.thestreetspirit.org.

Street Spirit is a publication of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). AFSC was founded by Quakers in 1971 to provide conscientious objectors an opportunity to aid civilian victims during World War I. Today it carries on Programs of Service, social justice, and peace education in 22 foreign countries and 43 areas in the United States.

In 1947, the AFSC and Friends Service of Britain together received the Nobel Peace Prize for their "silent help from the nameless." AFSC seeks to address the root causes of poverty, injustice, and war. We are called to confront, nonviolently, powerful institutions of oppression, violence and injustice.

The AFSC believes that people can change the world. Our job is to share skills, staff, and resources, and help communities organize. Once we get involved, we end to stay: 45 years from farm workers in the Central Valley, 50 years with the American Indian community, 17 years with homeless people in the Bay Area, 30 years working for Middle East peace with Christians, Muslims, and Jews.

To contact AFSC call: (415) 565-0201 or American Friends Service Committee 65 Ninth Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 or visit their website at http://www.afsc.org/.

The Street Spirit vendor program is managed by Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS). BOSS was founded in 1971 to serve the deinstitutionalized mentally disabled. Over the years, the organization expanded and added programs to serve all homeless and poor people.

Today BOSS operates 30 programs in Berkeley, Oakland, and Hayward serving 3,000 families and individuals each year. Our work targets four outcomes - affordable housing, improved health, economic security, and social justice.

BOSS pursues its mission in two ways:

1. Providing comprehensive services to help people gain independence - shelters, housing, education, training, employment, health and mental health care, youth and family services, leadership development, and more; and

2. Attacking the root causes of poverty and homelessness through policy advocacy, grassroots organizing, community planning, and fighting to include the voice of poor people in designing implementing solutions.

For more information, call (510) 649-1930 or visit http://www.self-sufficiency.org. If you need housing or services, please call (510) 843-3700.

To read a story from Tony one of the Street Spirit Vendors, please click here. To read a story that appeared in the August 22, 2005 Contra Costa Times article discusses the Street Spirit Publication which BOSS supplies the vendors titled Newspaper share stories, helps those in need, please click here.

To read stories and poems from BOSS participants, please click here. Once again, If you would like to read stories and poems from the Street Spirit publication via our website, please click here. To visit Street Spirit's website which includes all articles and stories please, go to their website at http://www.thestreetspirit.org.

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