Borneo Lady: Nothing is too small for the spirit of giving.

"Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love" - Quote from mother Teresa 💓🙏

Early Sept 2023, my friends and I talked about doing a small personal charity. Our priority was the Orphanage then the Old Folk's Home. I have an unused store about the size of a standard container, so I decided to convert it into a charity store. The store was located on my son's land, and it is situated in a small village, Kg Ganang within the city of Kota Kinabalu

On 15th September 2023, we started to clean the empty store and organised some of my son's business shelf's racks to display our preloved items.

Views from the outside looking in, we cleaned and tidied the store , ready to start selling our items.

By the 27th September 2023, we had our 1st opening, starting with my friends' and my own donated items., displayed in the store. There wasn't much but at least it's a beginning to start off with.😜

Later I informed as many of my friends I could think of, including friends from Singapore about this charity project.

As time went by, we received a good number of varying offerings from friends to sell. 🙏

By the end of Oct, the store was almost full of stuff😂

There were all sorts of items, such as fans, home decors, books, cups, plates, kettles, an induction cooker, oven and clothes, etc

Most stuff were sold at a charity price, ie, cheap and some even as low as 20sen!

The above items sold quite fast after being on display. But there was also stuff that didn't catch the eye of the shoppers.

Such as this branded long pant jeans which was too worn-out to wear, especially the top part but the leg part was still good. It would cost Rm100+ for such branded jeans when it was newly bought. We started with the price of Rm3. After a few weeks, when the jeans had not been sold, we lowered the price further to Rm1 and later to as low as 50 sen. Still no one was interested.

At the same time, I sewed a few handbags to sell .

I followed the tutorial from this 👆utube.

These newly handmade bags were sold like hot cakes. Since they were homemade by me, it was not easy to find the same style with same material pattern. That's why they were special.😄

This is one of my few friends who bought a bag from me for the charity.

Another friend bought this homemade bag. She was also one of the team in our charity group. After she bought this bag, her daughter in law asked if I could make a knapsack!!

An idea came to my head. Thinking of her unsold donated jeans, I decided to make use of this torn jeans into a knapsack! Though I had not made a knapsack before, I bravely went ahead and created one!😅 If you don't try, you will never know or succeed.

I started to browse through Utube to get ideas and found this channel that caught my eye and here started my new project!😍

Beginning of my project😄

I cut out 12 pieces of 5cm X 27cm strips from the Jeans material that I had saved and another 12 pieces from the left over floral material to start with.

Ready for assembling the material pieces for the "planned" bag

I realised there wasn't enough jean's material for the top cover, so I created a patchwork method, ie combining the last bits and pieces of the left over jean's material and the floral material together to form enough parts/pieces to make the top cover.

At the end of the day, a beautiful patchwork knapsack was born! 😁

My friend's daughter-in -law was so satisfied with the pattern that she donated Rm50 for it! 😁

She said it's a one in a million bag!😉 It shows how creativity can increase an item's value 100times😂 .From 50 sen to Rm50!🤭

The store was located just behind Taska Kemas , Kg Ganang ,Kepayan.

The 1st month, we only managed to receive Rm66 but it did not discourage us, we continued because we all have "big hearts".💗😍

By end of December, we managed to accumulate an amount of Rm234.15😀 Although the amount was small, it was still worth it .

We can only do our best and leave the rest in God's hands.

This is how our charity store came to life! and where the donations came from.

My friends suggested that we sell donated goods at low prices. Each item sold would reap a multitude of benefits to more than one group of the population. It would enable the lower income to buy things they need at an affordable price and contribute to the charity receiving the funds. This would also show everyone that nothing is too small when we are ready to help. And of course their contributions would add to the amount of funds raised for the charity chosen.

Of course there are many naysayers too. Some commented why waste time doing such work when they received a lot of help from govt and NGO with bigger funds.

Some think that if we don't have thousands to donate then we might as well forget it, But our goal is not for fame or to compare who can give the most. We are more to thinking that " every little bit helps"

Churches and NGO can't often raise funds everyday to support such homes because it can lead to "Donation fatigue".

On 3rd January 2024, we visited Bukit Harapan, Menggatal.

And donated this small amount that we accumulated with sincerity from our hearts.

There were about 40 inmates whom the homes categorises them as "Special needs people".🙏

Liza, one of the caretakers( in red T-shirt) and an inmate(right of picture) of Bukit Harapan.

Visit to Bukit Harapan ,Menggatal

The founder, Ms Anne's quarters together with the "special needs people"💓

"Special needs people" of Bukit Harapan, Menggatal

A few weeks later, on the 19th January 2024, we received a letter of thanks from the founder of Bukit Harapan, Ms Anne.

We took this opportunity to thank everyone who was involved in this simple small project and their donations in making our efforts a worthwhile and fulfilling journey🙏

It cost nothing to make people smile😊