2025 Winner
ASIYAH & JAWAD JAVED
Local shopkeepers have donated more than £100,000 of food and medical assistance to people in their community since the pandemic.
Jawad, 39, and Asiyah, 38, who bought A&J Alloa Road Shop in Stenhousemuir, near Falkirk, eight years ago, started their community outreach during lockdown.
But even as the world has returned to normal, the pair have not stopped helping their community, and are still going strong five years later. Mum-of-three Asiyah said: “When the pandemic hit we had been saving for a family holiday to take our children to Florida. We couldn’t go so we used the money we had saved to order quite a lot of hand gel, face masks and wipes which we gave to our NHS worker customers and the vulnerable in our community.”
Jawad said: “The local hospital was also struggling to get access to a lot of the same stuff, so we ordered over 10,000 bottles of hand gel and face masks and donated them all to them. In total we wound up spending around £35,000 supporting the community around that time.”
Now the pandemic is over, Jawad and Asiyah focus on helping people in need and supporting four local care homes. They deliver food to elderly customers and hundreds of Easter eggs and boxes of chocolates to the care homes.
Asiyah said: “Once the pandemic was over we found ourselves looking for other ways to give back to the community and keep the momentum going. “We now deliver food to our elderly customers and bring local care homes Easter eggs and boxes of chocolates at Christmas.”
“Those in the care homes often can’t be with family at Easter and Christmas, so we just like to cheer them up a bit and let them know that they are appreciated”.