The power of rallying together

Through the Lilit. and Farm Fresh collaboration, 1,000 care packs of items including baju Raya were donated to women in need for a happier Aidilfitri.

Vivy Yusof, co-founder of FashionValet and dUCk Group

IF there’s any year that has made me feel more patriotic than ever, I’m telling you, it’s this year.

I have seen Malaysians rallying together like never before, making commitments to support causes that matter and pledging to help where they can.

Hashtags like #kitajagakita are trending, community programmes are mushrooming, neighbours are looking out for one another and big businesses are actively helping smaller businesses.

The sacrifices of our brave frontliners and the ever busy social media creating so much awareness to help one another – the rakyat are rising and answering the call for help. It is the most inspiring thing I have ever seen.

The pandemic has greatly impacted our community and so many people are struggling with loss of income. I wanted to do something to help them.

I feel blessed that as an entrepreneur, I have the platform to do more via my brands. The FashionValet Group of Brands has been badly hit by the pandemic as well. Our stores have been forced to close multiple times, we have no offline sales and we still have to pay rent, yet our retail team isn’t sitting pretty at home.

They have volunteered at Covid-19 vaccination centres and I could not feel prouder of them.

Despite facing our own business challenges, the FV Group has worked tirelessly to come up with ideas on how we can help our country weather these tough times.

The FV Bazaar platform was created to enable food vendors to list their businesses free of charge. This year, the platform was extended to include fashionvendors.

We have championed multiple crowdsourcing initiatives, and have also raised and donated close to RM5mil to help local communities.For FashionValet’s 10th anniversary, we donated RM100,000 to the Islamic Medical Association of Malaysia Response and Relief Team (Imaret) for medical resources to fight the pandemic.

We also partnered with Imaret to raise over RM2mil for those working to beat Covid-19. The money was used to mobilise volunteers at health facilities and provide medical and general supplies to hospitals.

Additionally, we created the FV Bazaar platform, where food vendors could list their businesses free of charge. This year, we made it bigger by extending the platform to fashion vendors as well.

We currently have over 5,000 vendors there and the listings are all free – FV doesn’t take a single sen in commission. We are just sharing our traffic to make sure that they get as much exposure as possible to close more sales.

The dUCk group also donated 1,700 cooling headscarves made from 100% cotton for Covid-19 frontliners and distributed via Pertubuhan Ikram Malaysia.

For Hari Raya Aidilfitri this year, dUCk donated RM100,000 to old folks’ homes. More recently, we donated another RM100,000 to Hunger Hurts, a youth-led NGO, to help distribute food aid.

More recently, dUCk joined hands with MyFundAction to launch an emergency fund, raising a total of RM500,000 to ease the burden of B40 families across Malaysia who are struggling financially due to the pandemic.

In July, we wanted to raise awareness of the local arts industry and partnered with a team of local mural artists called Art Battalion to launch a unique collection of 100 hand-painted dUCk shopping bags. They sold out in three minutes!

We also hosted a Paint Your dUCk auction shortly after, where our customers auctioned off their paintings on dUCk boxes for charity. We raised over RM40,000, which will be used to buy more oxygen tanks for Covid-19 patients in our overwhelmed hospitals.

Recently, we carried out a charity effort for Palestine too via a fundraiser and a special “The Palestine dUCk” collection. From these efforts, we managed to raise over RM2mil. This shows that Malaysians aren’t just looking out for themselves, but for other oppressed communities too! It’s an amazing thing to witness.

FV and Imaret have raised over RM2mil to mobilise volunteers at health facilities and provide medical and general supplies to hospitals to aid the fight against Covid-19.

LILIT., our sister brand, is also doing its part when it comes to community outreach. LILIT. partnered with Farm Fresh for a collection collaboration and donated 1,000 care packs, including baju Raya, to women in need so that they could enjoy the Aidilfitri festivities as well.

On social media, LILIT. is constantly promoting businesses to help give them more exposure. At present, LILIT. is working with Mercy Malaysia to raise funds to help the disabled and elderly get their Covid-19 vaccination.

It’s honestly been wonderful to bring more meaning to our work. Our customers have been our pillars in making all these initiatives happen, and the team and I have never been prouder to be Malaysians.

I love our country because at the end of the day, we set our differences aside and help those in need no matter what.

We put race and religion aside and see each other simply as human beings who care about one another. It’s not about businesses thriving right now. It’s about pure survival and everyone is just looking out for one another to make sure no one gets left behind.

I’m proud to be Malaysian through and through.