7 News Belize

Wear Blue Campaign Raises Thousands For Gabriel's Family
posted (February 6, 2025)
Untitled Document The Wear Blue for Gabriel Campaign was started by the We Walk As One Foundation as a way to not only support little Gabriel's family but to further raise awareness for autism. It is accompanied by a dollar drive and several schools and businesses participated. Up to three this afternoon, the founder, Brian Guardado, told us they had raised over $1,000.

Brian Guardado, Founder, We Walk As One Foundation
"The support is very overwhelming. It blew up unexpectedly, we're grateful for the support that we're receiving from the Belizean community but most importantly the support the Gabriel's family is receiving, they feel the support from our Belizean people. And really the campaign was to bring awareness but not just awareness for a one day purpose, the plan in the near future is to actually use this campaign to raise awareness about autism and maybe start to do more initiatives to bring more awareness to autism, educate people, how to handle autistic children, how to communicate with autistic children and so that is really the plan."

"The dollar drive launched yesterday last minute, the last numbers that I have gotten from the team as of 20 minutes ago was about $1,268 so far. We just received a call from Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital and they have a donation that we need to pick up as well but so far we're over the $1,200 margin."

"We started the initiative after we spoke with Gabriel's father, so we spoke with him yesterday over the phone and we asked him for his permission to start the dollar drive and he agreed to it so all of the monies that are collected between today and the end of tomorrow will be handed over to the family on Saturday."

Reporter:
"What would you say to the criticism that this is a reactionary response, we already failed Gabriel, he already passed away, and now we're just trying to do what we can to assuage our own guilty?"

Brian Guardado, Founder, We Walk As One Foundation
"We live in a society where everybody will always have some type of negative response. From day one when the campaign was launched, there were many negative responses that we saw on comments, on posts and we definitely try not to encourage the negative comments but the truth is if we have failed him once, we will not fail him again. Whether he is here or not here, we're not going to fail him again. And so that is really the goal of Wear Blue for Gabriel campaign. I will ensure that this campaign does not end after today. One of the things that I was speaking with someone about today is We Walk As One Foundation is now going to add autism to their agenda so moving forward, wearing blue for Gabriel is not just today, it's not just tomorrow, but it's going to be for as long as we could keep it going."

Home | Archives | Downloads/Podcasts | Advertise | Contact Us

7 News Belize