GREENSBORO, N.C. — This holiday season, an extended family in the Piedmont Triad is teaming up to raise money for others who have also lost loved ones to violence.
The sponsoring groups, Fathers Against Gun Violence and the Chrisken Llkkfoundation, are calling the fundraiser “Know One, Help One.” The organizers say the funds will go to families who have lost parents and loved ones, to show children they are not alone during the holidays when the focus often turns to family.
One fundraiser organizer Kendrick Gilbert lost his son, Kendrick Gilbert Jr., to gun violence in 2019. Someone broke into their West Market Street home and opened fire. The intruder also shot and killed Gilbert's nephew, Christopher Parson, and shot and injured Parson's wife and 1-month-old baby girl.
The parents of Christopher Parson are co-organizing the fundraiser.
"We want to help the murder victims' children have a good Christmas this year. A lot of them don't have the funding or enough family members to actually have a good Christmas, so we are putting together a fundraiser, to make sure these kids have a good Christmas," Gilbert said.
Since that unimaginable crime, Gilbert has turned his attention to advocacy and preventing future gun violence, including an anti-violence rally in 2019. The fundraiser was announced on November 6.
"Please donate to this cause because it's very important to our community. It's very important to our city, with all the violence that's going on now," said Gilbert. "The murder rate on the rise. We are trying to help these children through these hard times, through all these murders going on. We want to make sure they are taken care of."
You can donate through their GoFundMe and learn more about their fundraiser on their Facebook page.
“There have been so many more murders in Greensboro, and more and more children growing up without their fathers,” the organizers wrote. “So we came up with this fundraiser ‘know one, help one,’ to help those who have lost a loved one have a little help through the holidays.”