Louis Vuitton Hands Gifts

By COLlive reporter

An annual holiday grant given out by Louis Vuitton to non-Jewish children has taken a turn this year to include Crown Heights youngsters.

Luxury French fashion and leather goods company treated students of Darchei Menachem Yeshiva with toys and games they requested for Chanukah.

The gift initiative is credited to iVolunteer, an organization that pairs Holocaust survivors with volunteer ‘friends’ with weekly visits, monthly luncheons and Shabbos dinners.

“Our volunteers are passionate people,” explains Sheva Tauby, co-director of iVolunteer. “So when our volunteer Hillary Deutschman came up with the idea, I was not surprised.”

Deutschman, who is Jewish, works at the designing department of Louis Vuitton. She asked executives at the company if the “Dear Santa” gift program could make a Chanukah nod this year.

Tauby told COLlive: “We called the directors of the Louis Vuitton foundation. We had phone calls back and forth and they asked the kids to write their wishes for presents.”

The wishes were happily fulfilled last week when a shipment of beautifully wrapped presents arrived at the school door on Eastern Parkway.

“It was amazing,” adds Tauby. “The children got all they had asked for with their names written on the card. We didn’t really name the new program. It was more like ‘This is what i want for Chanukah’.”