Everybody Wins

One of our greatest challenges is funding our programmes for refugees, asylum seekers, and domestic helpers – none of which are funded by the government or large funding bodies. These are highly controversial programmes, so securing funding is challenging and often downright impossible.

Establishing a small social enterprise is one of the ways we address this problem, and it helps to generate a small percentage of the deficit we face every year at budget review time.

That's why we're so grateful when we get phone calls from organizations like CLSA Limited. CLSA is Asia's leading independent brokerage and investment group. The company provides investment banking, capital markets, equity broking and asset management services to global and institutional clients.

After a recent exhibition, CLSA searched for alternatives to landfill as a way of disposing of 45 bookshelves which they no longer needed. After several refusals from other charities, they contacted Christian Action, offering us 45 almost new shelves. Without hesitation we said "Yes please!" We knew we could use all the shelves; easily redistribute some, and finally sell the rest. (It's not our practice to sell donated furniture through any of our four outlet stores as we simply don't have the floor space to keep such items.)

This great gift was further enhanced when Mr. Wong, the owner of A&P Logistics, agreed to collect the shelves from CLSA and deliver them to Christian Action, free of charge. This came about after Mr. Wong donated a van load of unwanted toys he'd picked up from one of his customers. After we told him a little about our organization and services, he realized how much we help the people of Hong Kong, and offered to provide free logistics services whenever we needed them.

Once Christian Action had our gift safely stored in our warehouse, we were able to give a few gifts of our own!

We are very pleased with the outcome of this donation! Landfill has been spared another senseless delivery; CLSA and A&P Logistics have done their part for charity (and the environment); our outlet stores with new bookshelves are looking very nice; several charities and customers have benefitted - and we've made a little money to help finance our programmes!

It's been a Win Win situation all around! It's great when everybody wins, and I hope there will be more of this type of co-operation in the future.