Charity store sells specialty food from sister counties

Coffee from Yunnan and red dates from Xinjiang are some of the products on sale at a community-based charity store opened on Friday in Jing’an District.

The store, at 488 Yanping Road, sells products, from clothes to accessories and toys to home appliances, donated by local companies and residents living in the Caojiadu Subdistrict of Jing’an. They are priced 30 to 70 percent off the market price.

Unlike other charity stores, it especially sets an area to sell high-quality agricultural products from the subdistrict’s sister counties in the remote regions of Yunnan Province and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region as part of the subdistrict’s poverty alleviation efforts.

The farm produce is donated by companies in Yunnan and Xinjiang and only samples are available in the charity store in Caojiadu.

At the store, people can taste the coffee. Then they need to scan the QR code to make an online order and the products will be delivered to their homes through express-delivery. It can help save costs and ensure the products are fresh.

All the proceeds will go to needy families in Yunnan and Xinjiang.

Local resident Liu Minmin, 70, bought a bag of red dates at 29 yuan (US$4.3).

The store was set up by the district and operated by charity store Buy42. It opens from 8:30am to 5pm every day.