Fundraisers planned to help Lladones family

Lost home and business in tragic fire

July 1, 2024, 9:12 am
by Ashley Bochek

Moosomin’s Filipino Community is planning three fundraisers for the Lladones family, who lost their home and their business, Moosomin Pizza and Chinese, in a fire June 21.
There will be a bottle drive Saturday, July 6, a Filipino lunch Saturday, July 13 at the Moosomin Armoury, and also sales of hand-made spring rolls. The family were at home at the time of the fire—they lived above the restaurant—but got out of the building safely.

“They have nowhere else to live now and they don’t have insurance. I don’t know what they’re going to do,” said Michael Vantomme of the Filipino Community.
He said the local Filipino community got together June 23 to plan the fundraisers.
“We were already planning the lunch on July 13 as a fundraiser for our group, and we decided to donate the proceeds to the family. We also plan on—aside from donating the proceeds from the lunch, we also plan on doing a bottle drive on July 6 and just give everything to them.

“We will ask everyone know to leave their bottles at the end of their driveway.

“We are also going to do what we did last year and also sell spring rolls. Just frozen ones in pack, just to help them out. Those are the three fundraisers we have lined up right now.”
Tickets are on sale now for the lunches. They are available the World-Spectator.

“We are going to have tickets to sell to the community. Tickets will be $25 each. We are planning two seatings of 200 people at our lunches with the tickets we are going to sell for July 13. The first seating will be at 11:15 and the second one is 12:45. Then we are going to have a Pinoy band serenading the guests. It is a Filipino band from Kipling coming to perform for the lunches.”
The community decided to add a second seating to help the Lladones family as much as possible.

“First we were planning only one seating for 250, but then we decided with all the expenses having to pay the band, the food—we have to pay for the ingredients for the food.
“We are going to talk to Co-op if we can maybe give a break on the cost to us to maximize the profit, just to help.

“That day we are serving pancit, spring rolls, rice, roasted pork, and we are also going to serve a traditional Filipino dessert we call buto, which is like a rice cake.”
He said the whole community is getting behind the effort.

“The whole Filipino community is involved. We posted on Facebook telling people they can send anything they want to donate to the family. We met last night to talk about it. We were already thinking about helping in some way, but met last night to talk about it. Our meeting was at the Canalta and so the family was a part of it because they are staying at the Canalta right now.”
In addition to the fundraisers, people can simply etransfer to donate to help the family.

“If someone wants to donate they can send an etransfer to pinoymoosomincommunity@gmail.com

He said the local Filipino community supports one another. “Everybody in the Filipino community is involved and if a family member dies even if it is back in the Philippines we just shoot a message through Facebook and donate to help the family. They are always willing to help.

“As soon as I learned about the fire Friday morning, I sent a message to the group and everyone started helping out.

“At 4pm that day they had already barricaded the entire place because the fire department was worried that people would be creeping into the building and might get hurt so we also did that.
“Everybody is willing to help. Everyone is really concerned and want to help it any way.

“Everyone was visiting them as soon as we let them know they were at the Canalta Hotel, they gave them clothes, food, water, whatever. Not only Filipinos, but Canadians went over to help and donate as well.
“If anyone wants to help they can just email pinoymoosomincommunity@gmail.com or drop off donations at the Canalta Hotel.