This week the Bills, Sabres, Bandits, Amerks and Knighthawks have an incredible opportunity to continue the conversation on Stopping Hate, Ending Racism and Choosing Love on a global level.
Our Buffalo teams were selected to work in conjunction with members of the UN and Eradicate Hate Global Summit Sports Working Group, which aims to use sport in a unifying way to counter hate speech and advocate for respect, inclusion, and hate-free communities.

Senior Vice President of People and Business Administration Christie Joseph, Vice President of Bills Community Relations Gretchen Geitter and Vice President of Sabres Community Relations Rich Jureller are representing the teams and will participate in the working group’s presentation at the United Nations on Friday.

The group feels honored to represent the teams on a big stage and is excited to be joined by several leagues and teams around the world.

“This is an important step for our teams, leagues, and sports as a whole,” Joseph shared. “While it is a privilege to participate in this event, we also feel it is a responsibility we have to our community. Throughout the last few years and especially after the 5/14 shooting, we have continually made commitments to long term impact in our own organizations and within the community and feel this is another opportunity to foster necessary change through utilizing the power sports has as a global connector.”

Friday’s presentation is just the beginning of Buffalo’s partnership with the UN and Eradicate Hate Global Summit Working Group.

The Working Group, including Buffalo’s teams, will develop a Game Plan of resources and practices that fans, players, teams, leagues, governing bodies, and their business and corporate partners can deploy to counter hate speech in every aspect of their operations and their communities, ultimately cultivating the broadest possible participation from sports of every kind around the world in this highly visible global initiative.