Raising funds again for Extra Life, the board game challenge returns!

For the fifth year I’m raising money for Toronto’s Sick Kids hospital.  So far thanks to the generous contributions you all have made I’ve been lucky enough to raise $6,681 for this great cause and I’m really excited to be back at it this year leading my own efforts and also captaining the Aureus Knights team (who holy shit passed the $18k raised mark last year).

If you would like to donate, I’d be eternally grateful if you did so over on my Extra Life page.

So why am I doing this?  I’m one of the lucky ones.  My daughter will turn 10 this month and she will have made 10 years on this earth without needing serious medical help.  I know people who have not been so lucky and their local children’s hospitals not only saved their child’s life but also did so in a way that minimized the long term trauma and impact to the child.  It’s an obvious cliche but children cannot protect themselves and are developing, the catered medical experiences offered by hospitals like Toronto’s Sick Kids make the world of difference in these fragile lives.

Why do I do this with Extra Life?  The Aureus Knights Gaming Community is one of the things I am most proud of in my life.  With a group of my closest friends over the last ten years we’ve built a community whose membership numbers over 2,000 and an online community has played host to over 10,000 people over the years.  I have been fortunate to make lasting friendships in this community and others like it over the last twenty five years.  The primary lesson in this is that online gaming community is large and can be an amazing social force.  Extra Life is a group of gamers who come together to use that social force for good, to raise money for Children’s Hospitals around the world.

So what am I doing?  This year I’m doing two fundraising activities:

1. On November 4th starting at 9am EST I will be doing a 24 hour gaming marathon.  Rachel, Paige and I will be doing various board and video games.  I will also be anchoring the Aureus Knights TV live stream and participating in various gaming events with the AKS crew
2. For the month of November Rachel and I will be doing our Board Game challenge again!  Last year Rachel won 14-11 and shocked everyone taking the first ever Bowsullivan household board game trophy.  We’ve built a page dedicated to our board game challenge here on the blog.  Check it out!

Thank you so much for everything you all have done so far to support me with this initiative and I’d very much love you all if you supported me again this year by donating here.