Days before Christmas, communities across the US joined together to memorialise those who had died while homeless that year. INSP North America director Israel Bayer summed up the tragedies that have beset countless homeless Americans, while a group of the country’s street papers collaborated on making sure these remembrances, and the people they were about, were noticed.

Edward Johnson has been working as a One Step Away vendor for over a year and moved into housing in August. Over 5,000 Philadelphians are affected by homelessness on any given night and, until recently, Edward was one of them. One Step Away finds out more about the sequence of events that led to Edward losing his home and hears about how One Step Away has given him support that he is richly grateful for.

The Big Issue has been reaching out to vendors across the street paper network to get the inside scoop on the cities they know best. Here, One Step Away vendor Sylvia talks about Philadelphia.

This year we asked vendors: if you could give a song as a present this Christmas, what would you choose? The result was the INSP Vendor Playlist, which is now available for your listening pleasure. One Step Away vendors in Philadelphia are like a microcosm of the entire street paper network – they have diverse musical tastes.

Today, North American street papers will join in with the #VendorWeek celebrations by hosting selling events, some for the first time. This #VendorWeek tradition is a chance for those unfamiliar with the street paper movement to understand better what street paper vendors do.

Sherika and Brian, from Philadelphia street paper One Step Away, tell us about their year and how selling the paper has had a positive impact on their lives.

One Step Away vendors Bernard, Howie and Jeff tell us about how they’d like to make the world a better place in 2017. Despite concerns about Trump.