It is of course quite sad when someone has to spend time in a hospital, but even worse when that someone is a child. Organizations and select companies around the world have made many attempts throughout the years to help cater to children to help ease their experience. Some have achieved great results and some not as much as they hoped. Gamers Outreach, a charity organization, should however be pretty successful at this one, as it should be next to impossible to fail.
For those who have spent any time in a hospital, you should be more than familiar with the many cart-built stations that roll around from room to room, as nurses check up on their patients. Computers that help them scan the barcode on the patient’s wrist to see what the latest progress is on their IV, chemicals (I mean, medicines), tests, and other various notes. Nobody really get’s excited to see one of these carts unless they know they will be leaving as soon as the nurse stops by one last time.
However, replace that rolling nurse station with an Xbox One, and you should have the attention of any child. This is what Gamers Outreach has been working on rolling out, and they successfully raised the money required to do so, via their PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds charity invitational on May 4th. The donations raised will go towards building what they call “Gamers Outreach Karts”, or “GO Karts”.
They act as a custom video game kiosk, which can help children who can’t leave their room, keep their mind off of the unfortunate experience they are in, by distracting them with some of their favorite titles.
Even better, video game developer Bluehold Inc. offered to match what was raised by up to a whopping $100,000. They successfully met the ceiling of this offer by raising over a $123,000 (making over $223,000 total).
“I was honored to visit Seattle Children’s Hospital to see first-hand all of the incredible work that Gamers Outreach does,” Said Gang-Seok Kim, CEO of Bluehole Inc. “Helping create new video game kiosks is one small way to show how much we appreciate the dedication and kindness that the staff at Seattle’s Children’s Hospital and the team at Gamers Outreach puts forth every day.”
