BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — Organizers of Voice Buffalo are on a mission to better the relationship between parents and their children so they don’t go missing.
Voice Buffalo put together a group session for fathers to bring them together and highlight the awareness of being present in a child's life.
Since organizers say many youth in Buffalo are running away and going missing.
Dontaya Davis is one of the organizers who say the reason for the group conversation is because she kept seeing notifications on social media of missing children.
“My Facebook, I kept getting notifications that this is a missing child, but I didn’t really see the attention brought to it,” Davis says. “Whether they ran away or whatever, they’re acceptable to become trafficked, kidnapped, snatched away from us. So yeah our babies ran away, they’re missing.”
Several fathers, grandfathers, brothers and uncles showed up to the session to have a talk about doing better for the youth.
“I know how important it is to listen to my children because they’re the one that’s going to inherit once we depart,” says Tyrell Ford, a father of two. “So if we don’t set them up for success, we’re setting them up for failure.”
One of the attendees, Daquan Barnes, is a brother.
He tells 7 News reporter Yoselin Person his little sister ran away a few years ago.
It was a heartbreaking time for him and his family.
“She was going through some mental things and she felt like she couldn’t talk to anybody,” Barnes says. “It made me feel like I wasn’t doing my job, especially being my little sister it’s like I wasn’t doing the best I could.”
Others say it takes a village to protect our children.
“Re-educate ourselves and some of the young parents that doesn’t have the resources.”
There will be other sessions coming soon.
Click here to find out more details on those sessions.
