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Stuart Talbot's Street Booksellers

Stuart Talbot's Street Booksellers

Date: 2019-10-04

In 2018, as part of the Denis Hurley Centre, Stuart Talbot established Street Booksellers, a programme that specialises in empowering unemployed and homeless men and women to sell second-hand books around Durban. The books are donated from schools, old age home, and individuals, sorted and then provided at a nominal charge to the vendors.

The programme trains homeless men and women. This has allowed vendors to earn enough of an income to get off the streets.

"At the moment, these men and women are limited by only selling books at fixed locations. They also have a limited number of books to sell as they physically have to carry these books. With a specialised mobile trolley the vendors could sell every day and from any location around the city. The trolley would also provide a safe storage space for the books and would allow the vendor to categorise the books and satisfy customer needs more quickly," says Stuart.

The prototype of selling cheap second books around Durban has already been proven with over R50,000 worth of books sold in the first nine months of the programme. Stuart anticipates higher sales once the mobile trolley prototype is developed.

Stuart says, "With this innovation, the homeless have a chance to work and earn a living on their own. The booksellers have found selling locations to access new customers who want to read but cannot afford to; by contrast second-hand shops are usually situated in middle-class areas."

Stuart currently has 10 booksellers.

"Winning the SAB Foundation Social Innovation Awards would enable us to scale up a proven model so we can help more people. It would be a big vote of confidence and motivator to those already on the programme, and those hoping to be. It would also give us greater leverage to show the municipality how the homeless can be a 'solution to the problem' rather than the problem," says Stuart.

Stuart Talbot is a finalist in the SAB Foundation Social Innovation Awards.

Launched in 2011, the SAB Foundation Social Innovation Awards forms part of the SAB Foundation's primary focus to ignite a culture of entrepreneurship in South Africa. To date, the programme has invested in over 100 entrepreneurs and their innovations. The Social Innovation Awards invest in innovative business ideas that can solve social problems. This includes, but is not limited to energy, water, health, education, housing, and food security.