Case study: The Street Store

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From the course by University of Cape Town

Becoming a changemaker: Introduction to Social Innovation

225 ratings

University of Cape Town

Becoming a changemaker: Introduction to Social Innovation

225 ratings

This free 6 week course is for anyone who wants to make a difference. Whether you are already familiar with the field of social innovation or social entrepreneurship, working for an organization that wants to increase its social impact, or just starting out, this course will take you on a journey of exploring the complex problems that surround us and how to start thinking about solutions. We will debunk common assumptions around what resources are needed to begin acting as a social innovator. We will learn from the numerous examples of social innovations happening all over the world. You will be challenged to get out of your comfort zone and start engaging with the diverse spaces around you. By the end of the course, you will have formed your own approach to social innovation, and you will have begun to develop the concepts, mindset, skills, and relationships that will enable you to start and evolve as a changemaker. You will be able to purchase a Verified Certificate if you wish to show evidence of your achievements, but this is optional, and you may apply for Financial Aid if you are unable to pay the certificate fee. The Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship co-created this course with RLabs, a social movement ‘born-and-bred’ in Bridgetown, Cape Town that is now active in 22 countries. The movement empowers youth through innovative and disruptive technology by teaching them vital skills and providing much needed support and a sense of community. Advocating and supporting initiatives such as RLabs forms part of the Bertha Centre’s mandate. The Centre is a specialised unit at University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business, and is the first academic centre in Africa dedicated to advancing social innovation and entrepreneurship. You can view the course trailer at www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcWYG64WO20 Tweet about this course using the hashtag #socinnMOOC

From the lesson

What do we have to work with?

One of the hallmarks of very innovative organizations and people is that they see resources where other people don’t, and they can bring those resources to bear to create new innovative solutions. There’s transformative power in shifting from looking at needs, gaps, and what’s wrong, to appreciating strengths, resources and what’s right. Through developing a strength-based mindset and an appreciative approach you can discover hidden or underused resources. These resources might be people, kinds of knowledge and expertise, time, and physical spaces. As soon as you start seeing resources all around you, not only can you move forward but you become energised and hopeful, and creative things start to happen. You’ll find that you might be a lot richer than you think in terms of what you have to start building your own social innovation with.

RLabs: Journey of Hope Part 26:59

Discovering resources3:16

Appreciative inquiry6:45

Case study: The Street Store5:59

Finding hidden resources6:21

Reflecting with RLabs: resources10:06

Meet the Instructors

François Bonnici
Director
Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town
Warren Nilsson
Associate Professor
Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town
Marlon Parker
Founder
RLabs

[MUSIC]

Let's think about this idea of working with strengths to identify

hidden resources in the context of social innovation in a community.

Take a look at this video now about Street Store.

South Africa, a country where the haves and

have nots live side-by-side, but seldom connect.

People want to help but aren't always sure how, and for

the homeless, begging is degrading.

In partnership with The Haven Night Shelter, The Street Store was born.

The world's first rent-free,

premises-free, free pop-up store for the homeless.

Somewhere safe to give and easy to collect.

Made only from posters, people hang up and drop off donations.

[MUSIC]

Then, the homeless choose they actually want and like.

For many,

used to rummaging in bins, this was their first dignified shopping experience.

Shopping at The Street Store was for me, very nice.

The people were accepting of me with friendly faces.

A week before the pop-up, we called for donations on social media.

Within days, we found ourselves on prominent national blogs,

news, radio, and TV.

But the world wanted in too.

Bono's One organization, Huffington Post, Good, and hundreds of others.

Thousands of homeless were clothed in South Africa alone.

And millions in free PR was generated.

[MUSIC]

More importantly, we brought people together like never before.

But homelessness is international, so we went open source.

To date, 162 stores have popped up in a 119 cities.

And over 2,200 are in progress.

A brand new way of helping the homeless.

And

it's now on the McCallie Avenue in Chattanooga.

A few simple posters to restore the dignity to the homeless in Cape Town

suddenly touched the lives of so many more.

You are sent from heaven, thank you very much.

There's no way I can pay you back, thank you very much, I appreciate it.

In the video about Street Store we see a whole new model applied to

charity clothing stores.

Something that's been around for decades.

Typically, the resources you think about to build a charity clothing store,

are a building, a lease on a storefront, a hiring staff,

clearly donated clothing you need.

But also, a whole lot of donated cash and capital to run such an operation.

Particularly, if you want to do it at any scale.

What Street Store were able to do was identify resources that

typically aren't associated with clothing stores.

And they brought to bear whole sets of assets.

The sidewalk, the pavements that they built their pop-up store fronts on.

The expertise of designers to create clothing,

to make it an accessible and open space for homeless people.

And, of course, they used technology to bring in and

generate interest and media to get people to donate clothes at a grand scale.

And they've used open source to be able to allow anyone

to volunteer to make their own pop-up street store.

And in a way, have created a much more efficient and

cost-effective charity clothing mechanism that's scalable all over the world.

But they've also created a space that was much more dignified for

homeless people to browse and get the clothing they needed.

And you can use this same kind of mindset, not just on one particular issue,

but on a community as a whole.

So, John McKnight and John Kretzmann developed this approach and

called it Asset-Based Community Development, ABCD.

And this approach would get lots of people from the community to come together and

start looking at their assets, their strengths, their resources.

What do we have here that maybe we're overlooking?

So, one way I might look at a community that's struggling economically is,

here's a place that's got crime problems.

It's got economic problems.

Drug and health problems.

Education problems.

A long list of things that need to be solved, might all be true.

I can also look around that community and I may see a different picture.

If I used something like ABCD, I might see a community that's well-positioned

geographically that might have lots of interesting buildings to work with,

even if they're not being used now.

Might have an enormous number of skills and relationships to build off of.

Might have a culture that's vibrant.

And those things can come together to create, not only different energy, but

lots of different kinds of solutions that will appear very innovative to us and

very different from old models of trying to address needs.

And it really is about shifting your mindset.

Am I going to look at a boarded up building where a business I love used to

be and you see bankruptcy and failure?

Or I'm going to say, look at that beautiful building?

Here's something that maybe we could do something else with.

Am I going to be in my community and see a 65 year old woman with diabetes who was

unemployed and say, wow, this is an economic and health problem?

Or am I going to say, that's a person.

And that actually is a person who knows everybody in the community,

who's trusted by everybody, who's an amazing communicator.

Who can network, who can build.

And coalesce, who could abrogate.

Now, here's something to get excited about, and

here's something to innovate with.

And it's a choice as to which of those mindsets to use.

And you can get accurate and meaningful information by looking at problems and

diagnosing them.

But you get generative and innovative information, I think more, by taking this

appreciative strength-based approach to how you're seeing your community and

the people and the physical world around you.

[MUSIC]

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