Several Niagara Falls social media personalities and community activists will unite Friday evening in an online telethon, hoping to raise at least $20,000 for a future police gun buy-back program.
What's called the Peace-A-Thon is lending support to an online fundraising campaign launched earlier in the week by Niagara Falls resident Jill Shaw.
"Really, it's a wonderful initiative and someone's got to do something," said Peter Green of Yowowa Media, one of the scheduled participants. "Jill Shaw was the proponent of it. She started the whole fundraising. We stepped in with a number of her friends and we want to promote that across Western New York as a means for everyone to contribute something.”
Niagara Falls Peacemakers will host the event inside their Highland Avenue headquarters, from 7 p.m. until 11 p.m. Yowowa Media and Black Reality Unscripted will utilize their YouTube channels to broadcast the Peace-A-Thon while the Peacemakers, Citizens United with John and Lisa, Edge of the Falls and others will stream the event through their respective Facebook pages.
"The beauty of it is, once this four-hour program is over, it remains on all of these Facebook pages and YouTube and can be viewed at any time," Green said. "So we're hoping it continues for several days to reach people and inspire people."
Elected officials have been invited to participate, but Green noted that they're required to make a minimum $1,000 donation to the cause in order to appear.
