Target reached!
With any extra money raised, we will support individual families. On average we spen...
The Free Shop Lebanon / Una O'Connell
Lincoln, Lincolnshire, United Kingdom
Aim
A community shop where everything is free. For refugees and Lebanese in Lebanon.
The cover photo above shows some of our team inside The Free Shop. It's in the Lebanese countryside, close to the Syrian border, and our aim as a charity is to help families living in poverty to still have a decent life. We also support the community through employing local staff and purchasing from local shops.
We stock clothes, bedding, menstrual pads, new underwear, kitchen utensils, shoes and more, and invite 400 families every month to choose the items they need and want. The free items families choose might be clothes for children, a school rucksack for the first day back, menstrual pads to mum, new shoes for dad. Overall the donations help families to live a decent life, and save what little money they have for food, rent and medical needs.
Although Lebanon is an incredible country, it has been going through hardships recently, with Coronavirus, a huge economic collapse, raising unemployment, the Beirut explosion... and unfortunately political instability and corruption in Lebanon is halting mass international relief. That's means we charities who are on the ground already have a lot of people to support, yet can't access enough outside assistance.
The Free Shop is run by six incredible Syrian refugees, and supported by a board of 5 people in the UK. At our core, we're a community project, but our board helps the team to have consistent operations and take safeguarding seriously. Any donation you make will help us to continue to help families in need, in a respectful and open way.
Here's an example of our costs:
- Ten children's t-shirts £5
- Fifteen packs of menstrual pads £15
- Ten school backpacks £40
- Free transport for families (two weeks) £90
- Rent for the shop space (one month) £150
- One salary (one month) £350
Even a donation of just £5 can make a difference in our work, as items are so cheap in Lebanon.
We also provide sustainable menstrual pads to families in partnership with The Pachamama Project whose volunteers in the UK sew pads which we ship out.
In emergency cases, we provide unique support to a family. This might be a big food donation, buying a fridge for summer, heating stove for winter, or paying medical bills for children and babies. One case costs us an average of 40 pounds, and can make a big difference in someone's life. (This can be donated directly, or for more information, or to be connected with an individual family to support, please contact Alice at [email protected] - thank you.)
If you would like to make a more long-term impact, you can contact us, also at the email above to donate monthly (£10 a month).
We want to say a huge thank you to Una Suseli O'Connell for supporting us through your book I Have Come to Say You Goodbye - A History of The School of English Studies, Folkestone 1959-2017, we look forward to using any donations to help families in Lebanon and must have you come out to visit soon!
With warm wishes from Khaled, Dalaal, Ibrahim, Tahani, Bashar, Hamida in Lebanon and Arthur, Lauren, Emily, Robert and Alice on the board. Thank you!
Our website: www.thefreeshoplb.org
Our Instagram: www.instagram.com/thefreeshoplebanon
This project successfully funded on 28th July 2022