It's Child's Play Charity Season!!

Like so many things, I found out about the Child's Play charity sometime in the winter of 2007 after I became aware of Penny Arcade.  Yes, I came to Penny Arcade pretty late, although I recall being directed to their a few years prior although I had forgotten about it until Chreekat left for Seattle to be an [Enforcer] for PAX07.

So Child's Play.  It's not that Child's Play, but it does involve children.  Child's Play is a charity started and run by the people at Penny Arcade.  Their description of their own organization is a lot better than one that I could come up with so we'll just go with theirs, "Child's Play seeks to improve the lives of children in hospitals around the world through the kindness and generosity of the video game industry and the power of play."   I've brought them up before in previous posts regarding the Humble Indie Bundles

Every "holiday season" (November 1st - December 31st?) they have their annual fundraiser and through the amazing generosity of people, manage to raise upwards of 2 million plus dollars in actual money and games/gaming products.  There are literally dozens of ways to donate.  

• There's the straight through Pay Pal method where your donation goes to the organization to be distributed later.
• There's the purchase a specific gift for a specific hospital from Amazon.com.  You're able to view that hospital's wish list and purchase directly from that.
• There's the Mario Marathon, where these people play 10 games in the Super Mario Bros. franchise.  They play non stop, 24 hours a day until they've finished the preset challenges such as "Super Mario Bros. 2 100% run through" and "Super Mario Galaxy 2: Beat with 75 Stars."
• There's Desert Bus for Hope.  Desert Bus is best described here.  What they do and how they help Child's Play is best described here.

Back in 2008, there was an event in San Francisco called Funde Razor that was a Rock Band oriented event with raffle where the proceeds went to Child's Play.  There are a lot of events like this that go on every holiday season that support Child's Play.

Anyway, it's only 5 days in, and they already have $300,000 up on their counter.  It's amazing to watch the amount grow as the year slowly/quickly ends and it's all to bring some happiness into some kids' lives, who could really use it.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

As Could We All.