Popular online shopping experience WeAreNotAShop.com is celebrating a successful first six months, raising €15,943 for charity from the sale against donations of over 800 items so far.
Blending altruism with a passion for unique design, the quirky online site offers a carefully curated collection of hard-to-find new, vintage and antique items. Every cent received for the site’s large selection of items, including artworks, gifts, jewellery, homeware items and so much more, is donated directly to the Save The Valletta Skyline Appeal (SVS) and St John Malta.
WeAreNotAShop.com is only online, and since its launch at the end of last year – at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic – the site has raised impressive sums for both charities, with €9,566 going to SVS and €6,377 to St John Malta.
“The idea for WeAreNotAShop.com began a few years ago,” Stephanie Laing, who created the concept, said.
“We had hosted a two-day fundraising event selling beautiful, brand new goods, which had been donated, and it was surprisingly successful. We organised a Christmas pop-up shop in the same year, which led to further donations of items, and the belief grew that this had the potential to become an online shop. It took us a long 18 months for WeAreNotAShop to come together. We finally opened just before Christmas 2020 and are thrilled with the response we have received both locally and from overseas.”
Once the Save the Valletta Skyline Appeal is complete, we plan to also help other charities
Soon to become a registered voluntary organisation, WeAreNotAShop.com ships goods to virtually anywhere in the world, and already has customers in the UK, Germany, Romania, Belgium, Greece, the US, Romania, the Netherlands and Australia.
Save the Valletta Skyline Appeal aims to raise €8 million to fund vital restoration works to St Paul’s Anglican Pro-Cathedral in Valletta, thus preserving this key feature of the capital’s iconic skyline. Meanwhile, 40 per cent of all money raised through WeAreNotAShop.com supports St John Malta, a voluntary organisation that is currently offering critical community aid through the COVID-19 crisis, as well as vital services to the local community and visitors alike.
“Once the Save the Valletta Skyline Appeal is complete, we plan to also help other local charities,” Laing says. “WeAreNotAShop .com is a site with the potential to do so much long-term good. We are extremely grateful for the support we have received from Malta and beyond and will continue to offer the beautiful, the unusual and the unique – all to keep helping beautiful, unusual and unique Malta.”
WeAreNotAShop.com is online at www.wearenotashop.com. Donations are welcome via the contact form on the website. For details on the Save the Valletta Skyline Appeal visit www.stpaulspromalta.org and about St John Malta visit www.stjohnmalta.org.