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Shoe Booth founder Maddison Booth took another step towards making life easier for families by giving away thousands of dollars of school uniforms in Invercargill on Saturday morning.
Queues were forming outside the former Land and Water Science building more than 30 minutes before the pop-up giveaway shop opened.
Miss Booth said it had been the generosity of a lot of people that had made the day possible.
H&J Smiths donated "heaps" of new school shirts when the store closed in November.
"We had thousands of dollars of clothing from them, which was amazing.
"But then we’ve also had heaps of donations from the community."
She had two office rooms filled with overflowing boxes of uniforms before the day started.
There were boxes of new shirts, pinafores, socks and shorts.
The store management contacted her and her mother, Donagh.
"Mum and I were in tears because it’s a huge relief for so many people, with the amount of stuff that was donated."
Donors had viewed their donations as "just a family helping families", she said.
"They know it’s going to a good place and it’s going to help people."
She got excited seeing both sides of the equation — both the donors and recipients.
Parents had to bring their child to the giveaway venue.
"Just so we know it’s going to the right place and right family," she said.
It took a team of volunteers to load borrowed trestle tables in the pop-up giveaway shop on Friday evening.
More than 30,000 social media posts, along with hundreds of messages, had been received as people became aware of the Saturday event.
"It just shows us that there’s a need out there."
Shoe Booth started the shoe redistribution bank two years ago, and had since expanded it to include ballgowns for formals.
As the vision grew, so did the work, she said.
"Every day after work I’ll go down, check the donation bins and we spend most of our weekends and free time for the Shoe Booth, because that’s what we love to do."
Miss Booth hoped the workload would ease in the future if they were able to acquire some more donation bins and a van to transport everything around.
Ideally, they would be able to have a permanent space where people could come to.
"We really do need our own place to have everything there and have volunteers run it, where people can just come in and out and shop for free", she said.
In the long term, they hoped to be able include more of Southland’s rural community, where the need could be just as great as in the city.
Maddison, who started the community project alongside her mother, Donagh, was nominated in the finals of the 2023 New Zealand Impact Awards - Local Awards division, which aimed to celebrate young people who were making a difference in their local community.