Selling for a cause

Hope Welfare Shop in Charrar takes its inspiration from Oxfam shops.

LAHORE: In a shop on a street that leads to Charrar Pind from Defence, a woman is busy dividing a heap of clothes into two bundles. One comprises clothes that are as good as new and the other old ones.

Lubna Shakoh, employing a staff of two, resells secondhand items at the Hope Welfare Shop. They comprise women and men’s clothing, shoes, furniture, decoration pieces and electronics.

Shakoh started the business in 2007 by asking her circle of affluent friends to donate their discarded clothes, electronics and accessories.

The money generated is spent in different ways mostly on the residents of Charrar Pind and Model Colony. This includes a dispensary that provides free treatment and medicines, eye operations and covering the cost of acquiring gas, power or water supply connections.

“We also provide dowry items like sewing machines, basic utensils or blankets to families who cannot afford to give a dowry,” says Lubna. Donations and zakat are also tapped.

Out of the items that Shakoh receives, used children books are directly sent to the SOS Children’s village or Qurban College for Women, a public college, on Walton Road. Some electronics are given directly to families in need.

“The used clothes are washed and ironed; sweaters and jackets dry cleaned; and the electronic nappliances repaired before they are put on display.” The clothes in the second bundle are sold to the poor at nominal prices while those in the first bunch are sold through monthly exhibitions that are advertised through brochures.

Shakoh has worked for a month at The People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA) in Britain.

“I struggled to get a job at the PDSA because I was a foreigner.

But I pushed hard for it since the idea of collecting funds for charity by running a business fascinated me.”

Shakoh got the job after she surrendered her passport, ticket and CNIC to the PDSA management.

During that month she learnt about how to run a welfare shop. “I got a taste of everything. I observed how second-hand items were collected; unloaded trucks full of donated items, tagged and dry cleaned them.”

After returning to Pakistan, Shakoh decided to run the business on the same pattern as the PDSA and Oxfam shops.

She now plans to open a bigger shop in the Punjab Society, for which she has already rented a place.

In order to encourage people to help with the cause, Shakoh says that they could ‘sell’ second-hand items to the shop. “We will then sell that item with a 20 per cent profit margin which will be go towards the charity funds.”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 4^th, 2010.