It is that time of year again where gift-giving is on the forefront of everyone’s minds. The wish-lists are long and plentiful and every commercial and advertisement seems like it is aimed directly at you. Another perk of the holiday season is taking time off to spend with family and friends and enjoy the winter weather from inside. Who are we kidding, everyone is freaking excited to get home and waste away a few days of their lives on all the sweet new video games that have been released recently. If you don’t already own Fallout 4 and Star Wars Battlefront, they had better be on your wish list or you are living life wrong. Just wrong.
This is especially the case for kids who are still in school — the excitement of winter break to stay home and be terrors until their parents let them waste away in front of the TV for hours at a time. It’s glorious. For most kids, at least. Unfortunately there is a large group of children that don’t get to spend the holidays in their homes having fun and causing havoc. Too many children are spending time at a children’s hospital because they are ill, and that’s a terrible place to be for anyone, especially a child.
One of the biggest challenges for even state-of-the-art medical facilities is keeping things around that can occupy their little minion patients during their stay. The Get-Well Gamers Foundation saw this need when it was formed back in 2001, and made it their mission to be able to provide electronic entertainment year-round to children’s hospitals all over the world and they have done just that. Spanning over 200 children’s hospitals and treatment facilities, The Get-Well Gamers Foundation collects everything from old school systems to the new gen (or next gen, did we decide on that yet?) gaming systems.
The California-based foundation has teamed up with many big name videogame developers and publishers as well as other companies like NVIDIA to raise everything from the systems to accessories or money to acquire those things and cover costs. The Get-Well Gamers Foundation also welcomes private donors and will provide a tax-deductible receipt on request.
If you have an old system or game laying around, or maybe you’ve got an extra controller your old college roommate left with you that you’d like to donate, please box it up and ship it to:
The Get-Well Gamers Foundation
21612 Hanakai Lane
Huntington Beach, CA, 92646
Include your full name and return address on a note inside the box for the receipt and a thank you note. Cash works just as well to help with shipping, outreach, refurbishing costs, and acquiring games and accessories that are in short supply and can be donated through their Paypal, sending a check, or even stopping by with cash (but please don’t mail cash).
Any other details you feel like you are missing or want to generally know more about The Get-Well Gamers Foundation and what they do — check out their official website. There you’ll find press releases from events they have sponsored as well as a FAQ page, a page that lists all of the hospitals within their network, and you can even suggest a healthcare facility to be added to the network the foundation operates with.
Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
