We are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Child’s Play charity this year with a dinner and auction on Friday November 10th! We would love it if you joined us!
It’s hard to believe that it has been 20 years since we started Child’s Play. Jerry and I asked you to send some toys that we could take over to the local Children’s Hospital. I posted my HOME address on the internet and figured I’d get a few boxes of toys we could throw in my car and drive over to the hospital ourselves. Then the angry mailmen started arriving.
Truck after truck of packages began arriving at my little townhouse. We started by packing the garage floor to ceiling and eventually moved to the interior.
It was not uncommon for us to spend 8 hours a day just “shucking” boxes. Taking the toys out of the Amazon boxes and stacking them. Eventually someone donated a semi truck and trailer so that along with a group of volunteers we could load the toys and get them to the Seattle Children's hospital. When we arrived the only space they had that could hold them was a massive drained swimming pool. It was an eye opening first year for the charity.
20 years later and Child’s Play is still going strong. Now I sit on a board of directors alongside doctors and game industry leaders. We are still sending truck loads of games, toys and technology to hospitals (now all over the world) but we also have a new focus. The Gaming and Technology specialist is a position we created inside hospitals to help manage and effectively use toys,games and tech to improve the lives of sick kids.
These positions are initially funded by your donations but inevitably picked up by the hospitals once they see how valuable a Game Tech can be. In one hospital a Game Tech has organized hospital wide Fall Guys tournaments so all the kids can play and talk together without having to leave their beds. Game Techs have helped kids to 3D print copies of medical devices they will need to have in their hearts so they can better understand the procedure. They use VR and games to distract kids during procedures that would otherwise require significant anesthetic. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what these Game Techs are doing and the best part is they are documenting and sharing all of it. They just recently had a meetup where they all got together and talked about best practices, the projects they were working on and their results. All of this with the goal of using games and technology to measurably improve the lives of children in hospitals. I could not be more proud of the work they are doing thanks to your generous support of Child’s Play each year.
With that in mind we would love it if you joined us to celebrate 20 years of Child’s Play this November 10th with a dinner auction. It will be a fun night of food and drinks with the goal of raising money for Child’s Play. I will be there and I’ll be passing on some original sketches and other goodies for the auction as well. If you would like to join us, you can find all the details right here. I hope to see you there!
-Gabe out
