THUNDER BAY – A pair of local General Motors dealerships are helping mask those in need in Thunder Bay.
Representatives of Dominion Motors and Badanai Motors on Tuesday donated a combined 4,000 face masks to the Indigenous Friendship Centre.
The masks will be handed out to the centre’s clients, many of whom cannot afford the cost of the disposable personal protective equipment that are required to enter businesses and serve as a barrier to spreading COVID-19 in the community.
Tyler and Stacy Dolcetti, owners of Thunder Bay’s Dominion Motors, said it’s great to be able to give back to such a great cause.
“We feel it’s very important. Obviously everybody’s in the need right now and it’s going to be a while until we’re out of the mask wearing,” Tyler Dolcetti said. “We definitely wanted to donate to a good cause.”
“We believe in helping the community in any way that we can,” Stacy Dolcetti added.
Pat Spina, the general sales manager at Badanai Motors, agreed wholeheartedly.
“It’s a needed thing in the community, so we always look forward to helping out in the community and this is one of the great things we can do to help out.”
Marco Pasinelli, the pandemic safety response co-ordinator at the Thunder Bay Indigenous Friendship Centre, said he’s grateful to General Motors for the donation, which will go a long way to keeping their clientele safe from COVID-19.
“We’ll be distributing these masks to some of our partners out in the community,” Pasinelli said.
“We have a lot of clients that are in the low-income bracket and we do have a lot of homeless people that we work with. So for them, being able to obtain a mask would be very difficult. One of our primary objectives is to get these masks to our homeless and low-income populations.”
Blair Smith, a General Motors representative, said the company has thousands of more masks available to donate to local agencies and encouraged those in need to reach out to the company for more information.
