A city-wide newspaper, distributed to soup kitchens and homeless shelters, sold and written by the many Winnipeggers struggling to make ends meet.

That is the vision of community activist and Winnipeg Harvest volunteer Nick Ternette and the editorial board of Name This Paper!, a recently established, four-page bimonthly newspaper focused on issues ranging from welfare to affordable housing and bedbugs.

“Nearly every major city has a street paper that is primarily anti-poverty,” said Ternette, who has been seeking funding for the paper since he started volunteering for Winnipeg Harvest three years ago.

The paper, which has finally received an $8,000 funding commitment from Winnipeg Harvest, published its first issue in January with a distribution of 6,500 copies.

It is slated to incrementally expand over the next two years from four pages to eight pages to 12 pages, until finally becoming a full-scale, 16-page paper.

“When we started, I decided that I wasn’t going to do what some papers do, by (immediately) publishing a 16-page tabloid ... you spend a lot of money on it and you fold,” said Ternette, adding that the editorial board is looking to secure alternative sources of funding, including other social justice organizations as well as local advertisers in order to expand.

The editorial board is currently holding a contest to name the newspaper before its next issue, and eventually Ternette wants homeless people and those living on social assistance to submit their stories for publication in the paper.

He also wants Winnipeg panhandlers to act as street vendors, receiving commission for the newspapers they sell.

“Most cities have ... (the panhandlers) pay about 50 cents per paper and they sell them for about $2.00 ... that’s what I’d like to see in the long run,” he said.

Floyd Perras, executive director of Siloam Mission, spent 15 years as the chief operating officer of The Mustard Seed in Calgary, a Christian humanitarian organization that provides resources for the city’s homeless.

While working for The Mustard Seed, Perras became familiar with, and actively supported, a poverty paper written and sold by Calgary’s downtrodden.

“I think (poverty papers are) a great initiative to create awareness and understanding,” he said, adding that the difficulties faced by Winnipeg’s aboriginal population can be addressed in the pages of Name This Paper!.

“The percentage of aboriginals living in poverty in Winnipeg is probably double or triple that of the rest of the population,” he said.

Donald Benham, the director of public education at Winnipeg Harvest and a contributor for the paper, believes that a Winnipeg street paper can play an even larger role in influencing public policy in Manitoba.

“The overall welfare rates have not been raised since 1992,” he said. “We think it’s well overdue that those rates ... be immediately increased, and we also think there should be a system to increase those rates at least to the cost of living on a regular basis.”

Benham added that the editorial board also believes that the government and the private sector should go beyond the concept of a minimum wage, which is often not sufficient for those trying to support a family.

They should move toward the concept of a living wage, which would provide enough income for food and shelter combined, he said.

Published in Volume 65, Number 21 of The Uniter (March 3, 2011)