Our client, The Haven Night Shelter, provide shelter, food and clothing for the homeless. They asked us to help drive awareness and bring in donations on a minimal budget.

We needed to target two new markets of donors – young people who haven’t considered donating before, and those who want to donate, but aren’t sure where or how, or are weary of the unknown. Instead of a sterile clothing drive, we wanted to bring the haves and have-nots together to learn from one another and break through deep-set stereotypes, while giving the homeless a dignified ‘shopping’ experience.

The Haven struggle to bring in donations to clothe their 120 residents. Without budget for large-scale activation, we needed to reach a wide audience, making it easy to donate now and in the future. So we created The Street Store - the world’s first rent-free, premises-free, free “pop-up clothing store” for the homeless.

On social media we called for donations, then used interactive posters to create a unique on-street ‘shopping’ experience, bringing the haves and have-nots together like never before, whilst procuring clothing for Haven residents, generating awareness for future donations, and clothing the homeless, too.

Within 2 days of calling for donations on social media, we were trending, we were on prominent South African and international blogs, news, radio and television. This generated PR in excess of R27million off of a R5,000 budget. In South Africa alone we’ve been able to clothe over 3,500 homeless people and donate van-loads of excess clothing to The Haven. Since going open-source, we’ve had 121+ applications to host stores globally and they’ve already begun popping up around the world, from Cape Town to Brussels to Spain.

In this simple, interactive way, we made it both easy and safe to donate, and dignified to receive, while bringing two ends of society together. The Street Store isn’t permanent, as this would create reliance that The Haven doesn’t believe in, but rather pop-ups in whatever community is in need.

Found entirely on the street, the look and feel is simple, raw and true to the environment. And just like The Haven, it gives dignity to those who have none.

By making our files open-source, anyone can host an initiative to help the homeless in their community.