Browse Around Shop
The Browse-Around Shop is a fundraising project aimed at generating an income for the Association to help with the delivery of services to people with disabilities. The project was started in 2013 and was initially supported by one of the biggest retailers in South Africa.
The shop receives donations from retail stores from around Mbombela and surrounding areas and these items ranges from baby and adult clothing, school uniform, linen, crockery and cutlery and any donations received from the public.
The Browse-Around Shop is currently based and operating at the Provincial Office at no. 2 Silver Oak Street, West Acres. We are opened on Monday to Fridays from 8h00 to 15h30. Once per month the shop is taken to the pension pay points to reach out to our frail and disabled customers.
Word of mouth has played a major part in the marketing of the shop since it was opened ten years ago. The COVID-19 has slightly affected our sales as a number of our customers lost their jobs and some succumbed to the pandemic.
Over the years we invested some of the proceeds of the shop to our Enterprise Development programmes for people with disabilities. We identified women with disabilities and trained them on knitting skills. We also trained some of our beneficiaries from the centres on enamel painting, beadwork, crotchet and many other skills.
We donated one-legged shoes to our beneficiaries who were amputated and a lot of school uniforms to under privileged children around Mbombela. In 2022 we decided to make hampers of baby goodies and these were donated to new mothers at the clinics and hospitals. The hamper consisted of the following items:
- 2 Baby vests
- 1 Baby Jumper
- 2 Feeding bottles
- 1 Feeding cup
- 1 Dummy, and
- 4 Lipsticks (for the mothers
Although we made great progress with the Browse-Around Shop our biggest challenges is acquiring good stock for our customers. Our biggest donors unfortunately closed their doors a few years ago which left us with less items on our shelves. We are very grateful about the support that we are still getting from some of the local shops and members of the community who are continuously supporting our Shop.