Sto­ry & pho­tos by Nigel Teles­ford

Dance­hall King, Adid­ja "Vy­bz Kar­tel" Palmer has part­nered with Amer­i­can Stores and the Help Me Help You Foun­da­tion here in Trinidad to bring some "Christ­mas cheer" to the peo­ple of T&T.

From 1 pm on Fri­day, those in need of ap­pli­ances, toys and even some food stuff will be col­lect­ing do­na­tions at the St James branch of Amer­i­can Stores on the cor­ner of Agra St and West­ern Main Road.

While in Trinidad re­cent­ly for the launch of his busi­ness col­lab­o­ra­tion with An­gos­tu­ra Lim­it­ed, Vy­bz Kar­tel al­so vis­it­ed Amer­i­can Stores to put things in place for this char­i­ta­ble ini­tia­tive and com­mis­sioned Or­nel­la Luces and her Help Me Help You Foun­da­tion to or­ga­nize and man­age the phi­la­t­roph­ic ef­fort. 

He said: "I get nuff love every­time I for­ward Trinidad. Mi feel like it was on­ly right I do some­thing for my peo­ple here. Tri­ni peo­ple love Vy­bz Kar­tel & Vy­bz Kar­tel love Tri­ni peo­ple. So mi link with Amir from Amer­i­can Stores fi do a give­away of some ap­pli­ances and things on my be­half to show some love and ap­pre­ci­a­tion. Nel­la co­or­di­nat­ed and man­aged the rest of every­thing and its in full swing!"

Peo­ple in need of ap­pli­ances and the items of­fered were re­quired to sign up and par­tic­i­pate in a brief in­ter­view via phone or mes­sages in or­der to be el­i­gi­ble and the Foun­da­tion's com­mit­tee did their due dili­gence to en­sure that those most in need and most de­serv­ing would be the ones re­ceiv­ing this as­sis­tance from the ini­tia­tive.

Chair of the Help Me Help You Foun­da­tion, Or­nel­la Luces said her or­gan­i­sa­tion will al­so give stuff to some of the or­phan­ages and needy homes and wel­comed oth­er cor­po­rate and char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tions to get in­volved and share with those who are less for­tu­nate.

She said: "This was all his (Kar­tel) idea, as we nor­mal­ly do some char­i­ty around this time but not on this big of a scale. How­ev­er, I was hap­py to man­age it for him and Amir May­bo­di, who is the Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Amer­i­can Stores Lim­it­ed gave me the mon­ey to get all these oth­er things and we man­aged the screen­ing process on­line via our so­cial me­dia pages. We be­lieve the turnout will be great to­mor­row as we are al­ready over­sub­scribed, but still, we're go­ing to try to share and help as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble so folks can come down and get some­thing to eat and drink and we will have a wait­ing list there so that of per­sons who signed up be­fore do not come we can give to oth­ers who are present. Kar­tel has been a fam­i­ly friend for many years so I'm hap­py to help him with this wor­thy en­deav­or and look­ing for­ward to help­ing the peo­ple who re­al­ly need it in these tough times."

Peo­ple who signed up suc­cess­ful­ly to re­ceive do­na­tions are re­quired to col­lect on Fri­day at Amer­i­can stores St James for 1 pm.

Trans­port for the ap­pli­ances will al­so be pro­vid­ed free of charge.