Raising Money For a Special Charity
Last night (19th July 2018) I had the honour of being part of a team of streamers on Twitch, raising money for the excellent Special Effect. This small, UK based charity help people with disabilites access computers or/and play games when mainstream technology prevents them from doing so. I first encountered this charity through the fundraising work of DJTruthsayer but it was the turn of the marvellous TheHoneyThief to put our gang together and he didn't dissappoint- we smashed the £700 target with the total £2,375.96 at the time of writing *before* the blind auction bids are added in.
The hard work put into this by TheHoneyThief shoud not be underestimated.
I merely had to set my stream up and not make a complete fool of myself for 4 hours but even then I got more stressed than I thought I would when the time came to start streaming. I got setup- I added the Special Effect logos to my channels, added bot links to the donation page, auction page and the multilink. I had created scenes for the Special Effect videos to highlight the work they do when i had to go AFK. All seemed well prepared. Then the router started to play up and needed rebooted. My nerves intensified but all was good. Then I was getting nervous for others like Jacen_G who had horrific internet issues and was not able to take part until half way through. And of course for TheHoneyThief himself. In the end, I had no need to worry but it made me think that my 12 hours of panic was nothing in comparison to the 2-3 months of organisational stress TheHoneyThief had been through. Plus he had just had some bad news which is not what you want when being up-beat to help others but he managed it superbly.
I've said before that streaming is not as easy a gig as people think but it is even more difficult when you add in a responsibility to a charity- the difficulty intensifies. Herding other streamers is a difficult challenge in it's own right, ensuring t-shirts end up where they need to be (thanks Baz o7), all links work and everyone knows what they should be doing is monuemental. Then there's the advertising, promotion, gathering of prizes/auction items from sponsors and much more. The mind boggles and I was very thankful to be brought in to do my first charity stream as a team-member and therefore dodging that particular responsibility for now. We are, of course, fortunate to have a brilliant Stream Team behind us making much of that a bit easier but I am full of admiration for TheHoneyThief.
The next step, of course, is to organize one myself. I think I might need to take a weeks holiday for that level of madness but I know I am in a priviledged position to be able to game and stream. The occasional discomfort and stress of a charity event is nothing compared to the difficulties people face every day, all over the world, and rely on excellent charities to enable access to what we all take for granted.
Many thanks to all the wonderful people who come into my streams and donated last night and to the wonderful wider Elite:Dangerous community. You are all amazing. o7
#SpecialEffect #Twitch #EliteDangerous #TheHoneyThief
Additional: If you want to play Elite:Dangerous you can go straight to their store or, if you are reading this around 20th July 2018, you can follow my Humble Bundle link where the game is currently on sale. As an affiliate, I will get a kick-back from you using my link but it won't cost you any more #ad.
