$5,000 in Smiles donated to Children’s Home

Every Christmas, we here at Mario’s kick our charity drives up a notch with goals to give more, while involving our customers and fans. We’ve been working with Operation Smile for quite a while now, a very noble organisation started by ¬¬Pastor Madho and Chandra Basdeo which houses socially displaced and abandoned children. In August 2011, they suffered a tragic loss when part of their administrative building was lost to fire. They’ve been rebuilding and for Christmas 2011 we wanted to give a special donation.

We launched “Likes for Smiles” on Facebook at the beginning of December, asking our current fan base to invite their friends and family to join us in our charity drive. Every new “like” was matched by Mario’s Pizza with a monetary donation. After final tabulation almost 1,000 new fans joined us for the month of December, which we matched with $5 per “like” and merrily handed over a cheque for $5,000 to the foundation. Below, Dr. Luke Basdeo, son of Operation Smile’s founders receives the cheque on behalf of the organisation.

We also ran a Christmas charity drive in-store, inviting customers to purchase our Ultimate Deal Special with a promise to donate $5 from each purchase to the Cyril Ross Nursery. We’re happy to report that 3,000 specials were purchased between November and December which allowed us to donate, as promised, $15,000 to this foundation.

The Cyril Ross Nursery consists of 25 caregivers who look after 35 children, most of whom are orphans. They are also responsible for the medical management of 30 other children living with their parents or guardians in different parts of Trinidad. It brought us immense happiness to collaborate with them in our goal to give a Slice for Smiles through the purchase of our Ultimate Deal.
A big THANK YOU goes out to each and every one of our fans and customers who either spread the word on Facebook or came in to one of our outlets to purchase a special. You are the main ingredient to our Christmas charity-giving success.