Hennebery Eddy’s Community Service Scholarship Provides ‘Street Roots’ Mapping Tools & Training to Connect Portlanders to Social Services
Hennebery Eddy’s annual community service scholarship is part of the firm’s greater philanthropic effort, Hennebery Eddy Gives. Designers Eduardo Ruiz and Sean Silverstein share how they partnered with a local nonprofit after receiving the 2024 scholarship.
Understanding the Challenge
Near Hennebery Eddy’s downtown Portland office, we see the daily struggles of people experiencing homelessness. When our firm requested proposals for our staff community service scholarship, Eduardo approached Sean with the desire to create maps that support individuals struggling to navigate Portland’s supportive services. Sean’s friend in the nonprofit sector connected us to Street Roots. This Portland nonprofit produces a weekly newspaper created and sold by people experiencing homelessness and poverty.
Since 2007, Street Roots has published the Rose City Resource guide, a pocket-sized (4×4 inches) book that connects people in the Portland area to housing and shelter resources, health and wellness providers, employment and legal services, and other assistance. Street Roots publishes it twice yearly to maintain the most up-to-date resource information.
The guide’s maps connect people to critical services that frequently move or change. Unfortunately, readers often found these maps in the small booklet hard to read. Former volunteers created or clipped them from other sources, making it impossible for Street Roots to modify or reproduce them independently. After talking with the staff who produce the guide, we focused on providing staff and volunteers with the tools and training to create and update high-quality maps.
A Small Solution with Big Impact
The project began with a virtual meeting with Street Roots staff focused on listening to and understanding their needs and challenges. We presented a few map-style options using QGIS (a free, open-source mapping tool) and Adobe Creative Suite software. We also created a version to be used on flyers to guide people to hygiene spaces. With their feedback, we followed up with both video and PDF tutorials so that maps can be generated and updated without our help in the future. Street Roots incorporated their preferred map style into their latest edition, which had 100,000 copies printed (200,000 annually) and distributed across the Portland metro area in locations such as public libraries, hospitals, schools, businesses, and social service organizations.
Working with Street Roots has led to a greater understanding of our community’s needs. We really felt the project’s full impact when we visited their office and met some of the individuals who use the maps we produced, which humbled us. We look forward to continuing a partnership with Street Roots and appreciate the opportunity to dedicate work hours toward making a difference in our community.
“The ability to add easy-to-read maps to the Rose City Resource guide is a huge boost to the accessibility of the guide and an incredible use of the limited space we have in the pocket-sized books. Sean and Eduardo have been incredibly supportive in training our team and following up and maintaining a relationship with us! We so appreciate them, and Hennebery Eddy Architects, for prioritizing this type of partnership in our community.”
— Allie Morgan, Rose City Resource & Systems Navigator, Street Roots