A pop-up shop for Tel Aviv’s homeless
Two immigrants set up the city's first Street Store to clothe and pamper those in need
Tel Aviv has proved itself partial to a well-stocked pop-up shop, a temporary store often used for selling designer goods from a unique location.
Now two new immigrants are opening Israel’s first Street Store, a pop-up, secondhand clothes shop for the city’s poor and homeless.
The store, which will be open Friday on Ben Zion Boulevard, will include a full shopping experience, with mirrors and dressing rooms, a cafe, and haircuts and manicures. All the goods and services are donated, and all are provided to patrons free of charge.
“The idea is a dignified shopping experience for the poor and homeless, rather than digging in dustbins,” said Natalie Seeff, a British immigrant and lawyer who is one of the project’s two organizers.
Seeff and her Street Store partner, Australian psychologist Sharon Kirschner, came across the idea of a pop-up for the poor following their first do-good project, collecting toys for kids in the southern towns barraged by rockets during the summer conflict in Gaza.
At the time, they collected toys and drove down south, where they “literally knocked on doors and gave toys to people,” said Seeff.
Their first effort was so successful that it encouraged them to try something else.
“Life’s hard here, and people are willing to help, but there’s less of the corporate social culture that Sharon and I are used to from Australia and England,” she said. “We’re bringing our oleh [immigrant] perspective to help out.”
Then they heard about the Street Store concept, which was first established in South Africa. The Tel Aviv pop-up will be the project’s 160th store, and Seeff thinks they’ll be able to replicate it across Israel.
For now, however, they’re focusing on Tel Aviv’s poor and homeless.
“I walk past homeless people every day, people living on benches, in the street,” said Seeff.
Seeff and Kirschner began planning their own Street Store. They worked with the municipality and other nonprofit organizations, posted flyers about the event, and gathered people’s castoff clothing, shoes and accessories.
The response has been overwhelming, said Seeff, as people cleaned out their closets and brought bags of good quality clothing, some of it “still with the tags on,” she said.
Seeff feels sure the city’s homeless and poor will come to the store on Friday, although she’s heard otherwise.
“Some people say the poor are a difficult community and won’t come,” she said. “But the ones I’ve met have all been really responsive, asking if they can bring other friends and tell other people.”
She’s also been told that some Israelis, even those who aren’t lacking for clothing or food, will hear about the free goods at the Street Store and try to take advantage of it b using it as a kind of free, secondhand store.
Seeff isn’t too worried about that possibility.
“We’ll handle whatever comes our way,” she said.
Street Store Tel Aviv, Sderot Ben Tsiyon, Friday, March 13, 9 am – 2 pm.
The organization is accepting clothing, sleeping bags, accessories, hangers, and food and drink donations until Thursday at Wispa’s offices (11 Nahum Hanavi Street, 9:30 am – 6:30 pm) and at the event on Friday.)