Empowerment Project hosted the Seventh Annual Conference of the North American Street Newspaper Association. In May 2004, Spare Change News hired journalist Samuel Scott, who was a Boston University graduate as well as former Boston Courant reporter and Boston Globe editorial assistant, to be its first professional editor. He changed the tone of the paper from advocacy journalism to objective reporting on social issues and revamped it from a black-and-white broadsheet into a color tabloid. He was later executive director of the Homeless Empowerment Project. In November 2007, Boston's South End street newspaper Whats Up Magazine disbanded and merged into Spare Change News under the umbrella of the Homeless Empowerment Project. On February 28, 2008, Whats Up published their first 4-page insert inside Spare Change News. In 2008, Spare Change News received a grant from The Harbus Foundation of Harvard University Business School, to use it "to support a long-term marketing strategy to increase the awareness of the organization amongst the general public and generate broader distribution and commensurate aid for its vendors." In October 2010, a Worcester, Massachusetts edition of Spare Change News was launched. It is a collaboration of Spare Change News and the Worcester Homeless Action Committee. In July 2011, the newspaper replaced Adam Sennott with Tom Benner, a former head of the Massachusetts State House bureau for The Patriot Ledger as the new editor-in-chief. In June 2012, Vincent Flanagan, Esq., was appointed executive director of the Homeless Empowerment Project/Spare Change News. In August 2012, the Reverend Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, a Pentecostal (Church of God in Christ) Christian minister, community organizer, and activist who studied religion at Harvard University and Union Theological Seminary in New York, joined Spare Change News as Editor-in-Chief. In August 2015, Ms. Katherine Bennett was hired as executive director of HEP/SCN replacing Vincent Flanagan who had been on board for several years and had moved with his family out of state. Bennett, who is from the South Shore of Greater Boston, was involved in many homeless advocacy projects and was a journalist. See also List of street newspapers References Further reading O'Neill, Lindsey, "Spare Change? The Elective Interdepence of City Life", The Huffington Post, November 1, 2012 Simpson, April, "Voice of Homeless Struggles to Stay Afloat: Lagging Sales Hit Nonprofit Paper", The Boston Globe, July 3, 2005. Smith, Patricia, "Homeless lose in paper war", The Boston Globe, February 17, 1997 Walters, Laurel Shaper,