Street Store provides second-hand clothes for homeless
The Pavilion Shopping Centre collected more than 10 000 clothing items for distribution at The Street Store at Durban's Bay of Plenty last Thursday.
PAVILION Shopping Centre helped the destitute reclaim their dignity at its Street Store in Durban’s Bay of Plenty on North Beach on Thursday, 14 May.
The Pavilion Shopping Centre, which is owned and managed by Pareto Limited, recently hosted Durban’s Street Store, which had aimed to be the biggest in Durban. The Street Store, in collaboration with Rotary Durban, is a concept that originally started in Cape Town in January 2014 and is popularly known for being a rent-free, premises-free, free pop-up clothing store, found on the streets and curated by the public. It has been adopted by many organisations around the world. Any person or organisation interested in doing good can download the posters and host The Street Store in their area.
The Street Store began as an initiative to collect clothing for a homeless shelter in Cape Town; however, the founders realised that homelessness and
poverty were issues present in cities throughout the world.
Preceding the implementation of The Street Store, The Pavilion recently hosted a campaign for the month of April called The Exchange Room, which was a pop-up fashion buy-back centre with a two-pronged approach: that of driving sales to participating fashion outlets at The Pavilion Shopping Centre while encouraging the public to donate good condition, second-hand clothing and accessories to be donated to the poor. In exchange for their donations, shoppers were incentivised with coupons to redeem at participating stores.
More than 10 000 clothing items were collected and sorted according to size and arranged as they would be in a conventional store, for use at The Street Store.
The destitute from homes around Durban, including Ubuntu Community Network System, Key of Hope, Consen House, Ray Hullet House, Refugee Pastoral Care, TAFTA Mary Asher Service Centre and Holy Church of Zion in Inanda, were invited by The Pavilion Shopping Centre and Rotary Durban to shop at The Street Store. All donated clothing was free for them to browse through, try on and keep, and the response was overwhelmingly successful.
“We really were overwhelmed by our shoppers’ support of this worthy initiative, as well as our tenants who got involved,” said Nisha Kemraj, general manager at The Pavilion Shopping Centre.
