kindcaringpeople

We started this foundation 14 years ago while my sons, Taylor and Brandon, were both sick. It was a really dark, scary couple of years as both boys stood a genuine chance of not surviving. I am most proud of 3 things.

1) My wife and the women I witnessed as caregivers. My wife was a hospice nurse when we met in our early 20's. When our boys were sick, Cynthia's strength and stamina were amazing. Living in the hospital and visiting over 250 hospitals worldwide, I can share that a large percentage of the child life staff, nurses, and primary caregivers are women and Moms. Dads are great too, but I am so proud of witnessing how important, beyond the medicines, the role women play in healing sick children.

2) I am very proud of gamers and the gaming community. This is where 99% of our support has come from, I saw the power that games play for the hospitalized child, and the power and good of the gaming community.

3) I am very proud that we could turn our pain and suffering into a force for good. I am not sure I would have been able to do this work for 14 years if my sons hadn't survived, but luckily, they did, and that gives me the inspiration to get up at 5 am every day and do this work.

Part Two, Looking back in 15 years: I will be very proud of how we inspired the biggest gaming firms in the world to pitch into a ‘conspiracy of good,’ a new breed of charity that leverages tech, gaming, and innovation to be part of something bigger than ourselves, that we created a trusted place where gamers and their families can pitch in to impact and help sick, isolated people directly. In 15 years, I see our technology going beyond hospitals so that we help all isolated people have hope, inspiration, and that we’ve created a level playing field for access to tech and gaming.

Yes absolutely. GameChanger is not only a non-profit, but it is also a tech platform that is cloud-based, ad-free and we give it away for free to hospitals and the sick children they’re caring for. We offer some amazing content on the platform, including some that we know you enjoy yourself! We also have many years of experience, witnessing the desire for teens and young adults to be able to watch and create new content. So while we’ll always be adding new content for kids to play and watch and have fun with, we’ll also be adding more tools that enable them to build their own games and stuff, on the platform, from the hospital.

When my son had cancer and a bone marrow transplant, we lived in the hospital on and off for 3 years. We had a chance to witness how important it was for him to have an outlet, distraction and a community.

After this, the charity was able to visit 250 hospitals around the world and buy the staff lunch. Each hospital passionately shared how much gaming, YouTube and livestreaming meant for the kids, their siblings and their families. It provided a sense of normalcy amidst the chaos and loneliness.

Why do you think technology and gaming is a critical aspect of supporting isolated and hospitalize kids?

Your work sounds like it could really help a lot of sick kids! If there’s a hospital nearby, we recommend reaching out directly to see how they accept physical donations. You could also pick your favorite charity and have them facilitate the donation on your behalf. We could help with this as well!

The biggest difference we’ve seen is moving our platform and all the entertainment provided to the cloud so every person in the hospital can access our platform. Over the years we’ve worked with caregivers and found that their biggest struggle is not being skilled in the various kinds of technology available to patients.

We have to provide simple and easy-to-use systems that allow for caregivers to focus on the individual, not the technology itself. Being able to provide these entertainment solutions on the cloud has been the biggest game changer because every person in the hospital can have access to gaming and entertainment.

If you want to, check out some info about our platform here:

https://gamechangercharity.org/playwell/