A GROUP of volunteers are celebrating after their pop-up charity shop in Yate Shopping Centre raised nearly £10,000 in one month.

Around 30 volunteers, made up of mothers on maternity leave and members of the Chipping Sodbury morning and evening WI worked hard to keep the Baby Pop-Up Shop open for the month of March.

During that time the group raised over £9100 for the Southmead Hospital Charity Maternity Fund, with that figure still rising.

“We knew we had nothing to lose,” the two main organisers Emma Doney and Claire Davis said when asked about the shop’s success.

“We got really high quality donations and a lot of people wanted to spend money on it because they knew what it was going towards,” Emma said.

“You have to be resilient when running a shop as it is a stressful, but great experience.”

The shop was only supposed to be open for four days a week, but there were times when it opened on weekends because of the popularity.

“We don’t want to put people off because we want to show that anyone can do it, but yes you definitely have to put a lot of effort in,” Claire explained.

Yate Shopping Centre helped the team by providing them with a unit, free of charge for the month, something that would have cost the volunteers over £1000.

“We owe a lot to our sponsors Ian Williams, the Rotary Club of Chipping Sodbury and Yate Rotary as well,” The pair continued.

“We also want to say a massive thanks to all our volunteers as it wasn’t possible without all of them.

“We just hope that it can keep going, because we think it is so important to say thank you.

“There is so much pressure on staff at the hospitals and we were really looking to give something back to them.”

“The support and reassurance was incredible, Dorothy House have told us that they will lend us the rails for stock if we want to do it again and the shopping centre have said they will let us to it for free again if we want to.”

The shop was only ever going to be a one month project, with both Emma, Claire and a number of the volunteers now having to go back to work.

The pair did reveal that they hoped their actions had inspired others to do something similar for the charity in the future.

“I think there are a lot of mums that want to do something to raise money for the fund.

“We would definitely want to help support someone else if they wanted to do it as we hope this could be a more permanent thing in the future.”

The leftover donations have now gone to other causes in the area including the Yate-Genieri Link and Walking in Our Shoes appeal.

The duo are also taking on a triathlon in June in another attempt at raising money for the charity, you can donate to them here.