One November in Saturday at 6:30 a.m., maritime worker Raffaele Perri approached the dispatch booth, expecting his day’s work assignment.
Instead, his TD bank branch manager welcomed him with a $15,000 cheque to contribute to community services of his choice that day.
The donation is part of TD’s Make Today Matter project, in which the bank gave 24 selected customers in Canada and the United States a donation of up to $15,000 to make a difference in their community within 24 hours.
A day of work turned into a day of shopping as Perri replenished the supplies of Working Gear Clothing Society, which provides low-income men with clothing for work or job interviews.
In the past, Perri had distributed clothes he had collected to people in the Downtown Eastside on his way to work.
“I drive by every day; there’s rain, and they have a T-shirt on,” Perri said. “They look to me like they can use it, just sleeping in the corner there.”
On the day he got the cheque from TD, Perri surprised Frank Kusmer, Working Gear board chairman, and the staff with boxes of industry gear for work and suits for interviews.
He also arrived with a $10,000 contribution from Perri’s employer, the British Columbia Maritime Employers Association, which decided to make its own donation when contacted by TD to co-ordinate the project.
Operating for six hours a week on Saturdays, serving 600 to 800 men a year, Working Gear was set to expand its operations when a fire in late August above its original unit on Kingsway and Knight Street shuttered the building indefinitely.
Kusmer said a donation of many pairs of steel-toed boots had also been stolen from a separate storage space several months before the fire, which resulted in a shortage of work-safe gear.
“We were in recovery mode,” he said, “so Make Today Matter really helped us a great deal in getting back on our feet.”
Working Gear will reopen in January on Kingsway by the Joyce SkyTrain station.
TD branch manager Zinnia Johnston, who had first nominated Perri when the TD marketing team from Toronto approached her about the charity campaign, accompanied him throughout that day of giving. She said the experience was eye-opening. “A lot of times we hear about the world, but I didn’t realize how much we need in Vancouver.”
Perri also gave $2,000 of the donation to Union Gospel, a non-profit Christian organization that provides free Christmas dinners in the Downtown Eastside.
“It’s a good time of the year for those guys to have a good meal,” Perri said.
