(BUFFALO, NEW YORK) - It’s a long-time tradition and it will be happening again this weekend as the area’s Labor Unions and their Members make their donations to the 60th Annual Variety Club Kids Telethon, which goes to benefit Buffalo’s Oishei Children’s Hospital.

The telethon will take place at Variety Club Headquarters at 6114 Broadway in Lancaster, just outside Buffalo.  It kicks off on Saturday (March 5th), from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. - televised on WGRZ-TV/Channel 2, and continues into Sunday (March 6th) from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on WBBZ-TV. 

“Labor’s ‘always been part of’ (the Variety Club Telethon).  ‘It brings us all together’ - ‘A union of Unions.’  ‘It’s great to see.’  ‘It also highlights the fact Unions are more than willing to give back (to their communities),’” Variety Club Telethon Labor Chair and Teamsters Local 264 Representative Tony Vaccaro told WNYLaborToday.com as he geared up to host the Telethon’s Labor Hour, which will be held on Sunday from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. 

A procession of Labor Leaders - representing the area’s Public and Private Sectors, as well as the Building Trades, are expected to personally present their Unions’ and Memberships’ donations during the locally-televised telethon that does so much to help the Oishei Children’s Hospital, the Robert Warner MD Rehabilitation Center and other children’s charities across the region.

Despite the Coronavirus Pandemic curtailing a number of public donation events that are normally held throughout the year, the 2021 Variety Club Kids Telethon raised nearly $800,000 in 2021, including more than $33,000 that directly came from donations made by Labor Unions and their Members.

Vaccaro tells Your On-Line Labor Newspaper he’s “optimistic” Labor can get back to the $50,000 level of annual donations that it had normally done over the years now that COVID restrictions are being relaxed: “Last year was a ‘suppressed’ total.  I think ‘we’ll rebound this year.’”

Variety Club Executive Director Richard Goldstein said Organized Labor has been with the “longest-running telethon in North America ‘all of its sixty years,’” which - he added, “is ‘one of the reasons why we’re still here while others are not.’”

In addition to Labor’s involvement and donations, Goldstein tells WNYLaborToday.com that 30 phones have been set up at United Auto Workers (UAW) Region 9 Headquarters in Amherst where volunteers will take donations that are made with credit cards.

“This is ‘very’ important,” said Goldstein, who was also “much more optimistic” now that the COVID-19 Pandemic is somewhat calming down and – hopefully, will allow the Variety Club to raise even more donations this year.

“(Even with COVID) We were ‘able to pull off ‘($800,000 in donations in 2021).  ‘We’re ‘hoping this will be a better’ year,’” he said.

Five-year-old Giovani Fiore - who lives with his family in the Town of Tonawanda and uses multiple services through Children’s Hospital, is this year’s Variety Club Celebrity Child.

Gio, who has Spastic Quadriplegic Cerebral Palsy and Epilepsy, is wheelchair dependent, g-tube fed and requires around-the-clock care.

Meanwhile, International Union of Painters & Allied Trades (IUPAT)/District Council 4 Representative William Mayer works hard every year helping raise Union dollars for the Telethon and has also historically designed and sold a variety of hard hat stickers and refrigerator magnets to area Unionists to benefit the Variety Club.

He’s done the same again this year.

By the way, you can also check out a tremendous video Mayer put together on the 2021 Telethon, headlined: Labor Loves Variety Kids at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdZ24vAMer0