Within two days of calling for donations online, we trended nationally, were on prominent South African blogs, websites, on the news, TV and radio. Bono’s One Organisation, Huffington Post, Trendhunter, Good, Fast Company and hundreds more helped share our idea with the world. This generated PR in excess of 27million off a 5000 budget.

We’ve clothed over 3500 homeless, donate van-loads of excess clothing to The Haven, and brought the haves and have-nots together like never before.

Since going open-source, we’ve had 121 plus applications to host stores and they’ve begun popping up globally, from Cape Town to Brussels to Spain.

We needed to reach a wide audience, but there wasn’t budget for a big media buy. So we found a way to get it for free. The Street Store is made of a series of interactive, die-cut posters attached to fences in public areas, essentially turning the sidewalk into a “store”. Donors hang up donations, then the homeless browse the shop and choose clothing they like – many for the first time.

The location was exceptionally important. It needed to be easily accessible and safe for the haves to donate, but where there would be homeless to shop.

To reach the audience we needed we called for donations online, utilising the best of two platforms - Twitter for its immediacy, sharability, and scope; and Facebook for its event hosting capabilities.

Public digital platforms met public environments in a compelling, integrated way to bring people together like never before.

Our client,The Haven Night Shelter, reintegrate the homeless into functional society by offering them rehabilitation, support, and shelter. They briefed us to generate awareness and donations on a limited budget.

We had to target two distinct audiences of donors – young people who haven’t considered donating; and those who want to donate, but aren’t sure where, how, or are weary of the unknown.

We needed to bring the haves and have-nots together to break through deep-set social stereotypes, while making donating easy, and receiving dignified. By demystifying homeless culture and highlighting their plight in a meaningful way, we’d get people to donate now, and in the future.

So we created the world’s first rent-free, premises-free, free “pop-up clothing store” for the homeless, stocked by donations. Since homelessness is universal, we went open-source allowing anyone to download our translated posters and guide and host a Street Store in their community.