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The beginning of the year is an exciting time for most people. It signifies new chances, new beginnings and new opportunities. Everyone wishes for the new year to be better than the last in every way possible, be it financially, emotionally or physically. It is that time of the year when people make resolutions about how they envision and wish the year to be.

We always encourage our vendors to set some resolutions for themselves, too, at the beginning of the year. During our January vendor meeting, we conducted personal development workshops with the vendors. We asked them to write down their goals for the year, how they wished to achieve them and the steps needed to achieve these goals. We always try and make these goals as realistic as possible for them. Some of the vendors wish to attain some form of qualification, be it a sewing certificate or going back to school. Some of them wish to be present parents in their households and some of them just want to be sober. Many are tired of over-indulging and spending money recklessly.

We are very fortunate to have a community of vendors who always want to improve their lives and better themselves. With the small amount of money they make from selling the magazines, you’d be amazed by how much change they bring into their lives. Through personal development workshops (PDWs), we are also able to identify our vendors’ needs, their strengths as well as their weaknesses. This also helps us to know how best we can help each individual to go above and beyond their capabilities. In as much as we have developed good relationships with our vendors, we believe that we are giving them a hand up and a fresh start. We want them to end up being formally employed and empowered to start their small businesses so that they can have some stability in their lives and in that of their families.

With all the different resolutions and personal development plans our vendors come up with, money is always the common concern or hindrance that deters them from reaching their goals or from not aiming so high. As we begin the year, I would like to urge all of our readers and customers to keep on supporting our vendors. Your support helps them to accomplish their new year resolutions and their personal development plans. Your support also helps us as an organisation to keep operating and continuing with the different projects that we are doing to up-skill our vendors. Towards the end of last year, we briefly stopped our Saturday school, our sewing classes, as well as our art classes so our vendors and their children, who also benefit from these various initiatives, could take a break and focus on selling the magazine and enjoying the festive season.

As the new year begins, we cannot wait to resume these projects because we know how much they mean to our vendors and their children. The Saturday school offers additional maths and English classes for our vendors’ children. The classes are very small and specially tailored to give a private school feel to them. They get one-on-one lessons with our experienced teachers so that they can understand and grasp the concepts better. Our sewing classes help the vendors to learn a skill that will enable them to earn an extra income.

I urge all of our readers and supporters to keep on supporting us as an organisation so that we can keep all our projects running. The vendors also need your support as they prepare their children to go back to school.

We also invite other organisations, and individuals that share the same vision, to reach out and work with us for the betterment of our Big Issue vendor community so they can fulfil their personal development plans. From all of us at The Big Issue, we wish you a fruitful and happy 2024 and cannot wait for all the fantastic things this new year has to offer.