What do you want next year?

This year our Christmas campaign focuses on what vendors are hoping to achieve with their lives in 2014.
For some, this could be finding a job, improving health, seeing family or sorting out a home. We were lucky enough to work with professional photographer Steve Devlin from Already Famous, who took these poignant photos of some of the vendors aspirations for the coming year.

Here are a few of our vendors who shared their experiences and aspirations with us. To donate to the Big Issue in the Trust visit Just Giving

Chris I have had a traumatic childhood and certain events that I had kept buried began to resurface about six years ago. I had a heart attack and on top of that depression. I find it hard to talk about things in the past, and put a wall up. When I’m selling magazines in the street I’ve got a mask on and I can pretend things are different. Sometimes the mask slips.For the last five or six years I feel like I’ve lost Chris, I tend to keep myself to myself and I find it very hard to trust people.

Stefan I left Romania in the hope of getting a job, but when I arrived in Manchester in 2007 there were just no jobs. I had had a good job in Romania. I was a street cleaner working for the town hall services, it was a good job and I enjoyed it but the department I worked for was closed and I was made redundant. At the moment I am staying on friends’ sofas but it is very difficult not having your own place to go to. I find it especially hard because I am here without my own family.

Joao I have bad health and so I couldn’t work. I was in hospital with a collapsed lung and had an operation to take the lung away, so now I have health problems and I found it very difficult to find work because of this. About 15 years ago I decided to become a vendor because I just had no money and lots of bills to pay. I find being a vendor is the only job I can do because of my health, although it is very hard because I can’t stand up all day and I have collapsed a couple of times.

Emma  I’ve been selling the magazine since the summer; I sell outside Rapid Hardware in Liverpool City Centre. I had to start to get more money because my Disability Living Allowance got put down to the lower rate. A friend who was selling the magazine told me about it, and The Big Issue in the North is not just for people who are homeless, it’s also if you are vulnerable. I’ve suffered with mental health but selling the magazine has got me out of the house and now I meet people.