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Surrey-based Fruiticana donates $101,000 to help sick children

Donation to BC Children’s Hospital Foundation will go towards treatment for kids with Type 1 diabetes

Surrey businessman Tony Singh has donated another huge chunk of money to help sick youth.

The reason is simple.

“Children are our future,” Singh told the Now-Leader after presenting a cheque for $101,000 to BC Children’s Hospital Foundation on Wednesday in Surrey. “It’s our responsibility to take care of them.”

The money will go towards treatment for children with Type 1 diabetes.

But why $101,000, as opposed to a nice, round $100,000?

“It’s in our culture, that it will carry on over 100, and then go to 101 and two and three,” he said with a smile. “We always want to give one extra.”

This isn’t the first time Fruiticana has given back to the community in a big way.

In April, Singh says the spirit of Vaisakhi prompted his company to donate close to 23,000 pounds of food to Surrey Food Bank. And last year, the company donated $100,000 to Surrey Hospitals Foundation to support the Children’s Health Centre at Surrey Memorial Hospital.

And in 2016, Singh made local and national headlines when for about two weeks he set about delivering free baskets of food to more than 500 Syrian refugees, inspired by an elderly neighbour’s generosity toward his own family when they first arrived in Canada.

Singh opened his first grocery store On Dec. 14, 1994, at 72nd Avenue and 137th Street, which is still there today. There are now 18 locations, in Surrey, Richmond, Abbotsford, Port Coquitlam, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton.

Roughly 500 Fruiticana employees also call this city home, with some 60 working out of his 125,000 square foot warehouse at 129th Street and 76th Avenue in Newton.



beau.simpson@surreynowleader.com

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Beau Simpson

About the Author: Beau Simpson

As an editor who started his career in 2000 with the Nanaimo Daily News, I am finding there is still much to learn about community journalism, especially in our digital age
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