Get Well Gamers Organization
PSP would like to spread the word about The Get Well Gamers Foundation across
social networks and friends in order to support this good cause.
Get Well Gamers Foundation
http://www.get-well-gamers.org/
PSP interviews Ryan Sharpe, the President of the Get Well Gamers Foundation
June 26, 2011
"Get Well Gamers Foundation provides video gaming fun to childrens' hospitals"
By Patrick Scott Patterson of Arcade Game Examiner. link
[QUOTES FROM Patrick Scott Patterson STORY]
The Get-Well Gamers Foundation, founded in 2001, provides video game consoles
and gaming entertainment to children's hospitals across North America.
. . .
Consoles and games donated to the Foundation are refurbished and donated to
these children to help entertain them during the often difficult challenges
they face.
. . .
Ryan Sharpe, the President of the Get Well Gamers Foundation states how his
charity organization began:
. . .
"The origins of the Foundation trace back to my own experiences as a child,
being hospitalized multiple times with respiratory illnesses broken bones,
and so on."
. . .
"Between the regularly-scheduled morning and after-school cartoons there was
virtually nothing to take my mind off of my ailments. The big change came in
the mid-eighties, when my usualy hospital put in a pair of arcade cabinets
in the employee break room down the hall from my usual room. I would walk
my IV stand down there and play Donkey Kong Junior for hours, huge swaths
of boring, dreary hospital time vanishing in the blink of an eye."
. . .
"In 2001, when I was finally in college and on my own, I was reminded of my
experiences by a friend and resolved to make sure every hospital had the
advantages I had in alleviating their boredom and having access to such a
great pain management tool."
. . .
"The foundation currently services over 160 facilities in North America, with
at least one hospital in every US state and several Canadian provinces."
. . .
"We're finally seeing hard science backing up what gamers have known for years:
that video games have an enormous ability to help people cope with pain and
illness by providing so much cognitive stimulation the pain centers of the
brain are actually de-prioritized during play."
. . .
The Foundation's staff and volunteers have made do over the past decade with
working out of our garages and donating their free time, but we're beginning
to strain
. . .
"The Foundation's never had much of a marketing budget, but the power of
the internet is that anyone can spread the word as easily as going on Twitter
or Reddit or Tumblr or Facebook or any other social networking site and telling
your friends about the Foundation.'
. . .
"We've had crates of titles come in from major publishers, and we've had
single games mailed to us in envelopes, and none of it would have happened if
the donors hadn't heard about what we're doing for hospitalized children, so
every little bit helps."
. . .
"Everyone that spreads the word. I think anyone can be a Get-Well Gamer so
long as they simply care and try to do something to help, and in that sense
Get-Well Gamers is a publicly-supported foundation because the public is made
of Get-Well Gamers, in every state and every city, willing and wanting to
turn their hobby into a force for good in the world."
[END QUOTES]
See "Get Well Gamers Foundation provides video gaming fun to childrens' hospitals"
By Patrick Scott Patterson of Arcade Game Examiner Story link link