The following methods are how WPI student team interacted with the vendors of The Big Issue to create a sustainable vendor-run program that would allow mentors to gather content their own content for The Big Issue’s online marketplace. The program has the intentions of advancing the online platform that will allow vendors to sell magazines online. Our team used the Shared Action Learning (SAL) approach to empower mentors to facilitate the program themselves. To make the online interactions more personal, our team wanted to create profiles that came from the vendors themselves. In order to create the profiles, our team obtain biographical information from vendors with the help of the mentors.  We gave them the tools to write their own biographies so that customers would be directly connecting with the vendors themselves. To accomplish this we had to connect with the vendors so they were comfortable with us and comfortable enough to share information online. Through this trust we were able to create a vendor-run profile program run by a group of vendor mentors to help other vendors share their stories online. This process can be seen through the activities explained below.

Read more about our Connecting Activities and Mentor Activities.

See our Interviewing Questions.

Take a look at our Privacy and Consent Considerations.