Keith Persaud, owner of Giant Tiger (left) poses for a photo with St. Michael's School Principal Ron Pisoni. The store made a large donation to provide toys, clothing and food to five families chosen by the school division.--SUBMITTED PHOTO
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Five St. Michael’s School low-income families are getting a special visit from Santa this Holiday Season after the school division and local Giant Tiger teamed up to organize Christmas hampers with presents, clothing and food.
Annually the school’s Christmas tree includes several tags with children’s ages and genders. Students will pick a tag and go buy a present for a child whose family has been selected by the Medicine Hat Catholic Board of Education.
“We always make sure that they’re comfortable with it and every family that we’ve contacted are very grateful for something like this,” explains St. Micheal’s principal Ron Pisoni. “So the kids in the family will get a present under the tree, or a few presents under the tree, and there’ll be some food and clothing as well, it helps the whole family not just the kids.”
However, this year Giant Tiger’s local owner Keith Persaud caught wind of the donation initiative and its impacts on local families, and decided to donate a “significant” number of items, including toys, clothing, small kitchen appliances, gift cards and foods, taking over the role for students, who were still able to donate non-perishable food items.
“There’s a few families that are really in need, to make their Christmas a better time this year,” says Persaud who explains Giant Tiger locations are able to fundraise annually through the company’s ‘Angel Tree’ fundraiser.
“We came up with some amount of money, we also had a drop box where customers dropped a whole bin of toys. Who better deserves that than the families or kids that can’t afford to have a Christmas?”
The MHCBE shared a photo of the donation with the News. Pisoni says more than 90 per cent of the hamper items shown in the photo came from Keith’s team.
“We were just amazed at what he did for us,” says Pisoni. “So there’ll be five families very happy.”
Persaud moved to Medicine Hat three years ago to open the local Giant Tiger location and has been actively donating to local charities, providing warm clothing as well as working with his staff to feed the homeless each Wednesday evening.
“One of the things we do, we try to give back to the community. I mean, it’s not much, but whatever we do, it helps, it goes a long way,” says Persaud. “We will continue to do that for families in our community. If we have to do this on a daily basis, we will.”
The holiday hampers will be delivered to each family today by members of the Catholic school division.
