Get Free Pizza For Helping Puerto Rico

WEST VILLAGE, NY — A West Village pizzeria is offering free slices to anyone who drops off a donation on Friday for victims of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

Champion Pizza, located at 2 W. 14th St., is giving away pizza starting at 2 p.m. on Friday for anyone who brings a donation of supplies. All donations will go to victims of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico or Hurricane Katia in Mexico.

The event is organized in part by City Councilman Robert Cornegy Jr., the son of famed Puerto Rican musician Tito Puente Jr. Cornegy, who represents Bed-Stuy and part of Crown Heights, will be at Champion Pizza on Friday to help pack up a truck full of emergency supplies.

The supplies donated on Friday will be delivered to Puerto Rico and Mexico on a cargo plane chartered by Jay-Z’s music-streaming company TIDAL. Jay-Z committed his company to hurricane relief efforts with the rapper Fat Joe. Cornegy’s office said that more than 2 million pounds of canned food, water, hygiene products and other supplies would be delivered to the areas devastated by the hurricanes. (For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

Hakki Akdeniz, founder of the Champion Pizza mini-chain, spent several night sleeping in Grand Central Station when he first first moved to New York City, according to a biography on the pizzeria’s website. That experience moved him to “help those less fortunate in Puerto Rico and Mexico,” Cornegy's office said in a statement.

Puerto Rico remains devastated by Hurricane Maria. The majority of the island is still without electricity, nearly two weeks after it was battered by the storm. At least 34 people have died in the natural disaster, a number that local officials say may not be complete.

Image credit: Spencer Platt / Staff / Getty Images News. Photo caption: A worker for the Food Bank For New York City moves a pallet of food headed to needy Americans in hurricane ravaged Puerto Rico on September 29, 2017 in New York City. Two trucks filled with bottled water, diapers, personal care items and food left the food bank's Bronx headquarters and headed to Newark Airport for a direct flight to Puerto Rico.