It is popularly known for being a rent-free, premises-free, free "pop-up clothing store", found on the streets, curated by the public and 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-prong 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.
Over 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, which was held at the Bay of Plenty on Durban's North Beach on Thursday, 14 May. 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 to this worthy initiative, as well as our tenants that got involved, Call it Spring, Charles & Keith, Earth Child, Fossil, iConn, Lovisa, Lucky Brand, Old Khaki, Poetry, Swarovski, Tom Tailor, TM Lewin, Vittorio and Levis as well as our media sponsors the Daily News and Independent on Saturday, "said Nisha Kemraj, general manager The Pavilion Shopping Centre.
For more information on The Pavilion Shopping Centre, visit
www.thepav.co.za.