During the summer of 2015, professional gamer Michael “Flamesword” Chaves helped extend our efforts to the east coast by donating a GO Kart to the Children’s Hospital of New Jersey. It didn’t take long for his delivery to make an impact. We soon received correspondence from the hospital requesting additional units. Flamesword’s GO Kart was being used on a daily basis, making a tremendous difference for patients and families.
Enter Jason Gill, known to the Twitch community as “Wolves At My Door.”
Through a 24 hour marathon inspired by Dan Gheesling, Jason was able to construct a second GO Kart for patients being treated within the hospital. Thanks to the generosity of his gaming community, this GO Kart will now exist within the walls of Children’s New Jersey for years to come. Hospital staff told us the GO Kart would be used in a specific section of the hospital by kids unable to reach the playroom, where a small inventory of games is currently located.
For those of you out there with an interest in supporting this hospital: Children’s New Jersey certainly has a desire for more GO Karts. The hospital’s current inventory of games is relatively limited, and new consoles would go a long way in helping the staff provide children with ways to cope during treatment.
Children’s New Jersey isn’t the only hospital requesting multiple GO Karts. In fact, all of the hospitals currently displayed on our website’s impact map have expressed a desire to receive more GO Karts. This desire is something we call the “saturation point” – in other words, how many GO Karts are “enough” for a given hospital? The answer varies from place to place.
Consider the following scenario: imagine a hospital with 200 patient beds and 1 GO Kart. Hospitals that find themselves in this position tell us there’s frequently a “daily waiting list” of children who wish to play on the hospital’s GO Kart(s). Depending on how long the GO Kart is allocated to certain patients, only a limited percentage of a hospital’s population can benefit from the GO Kart program on a given day. The “saturation point” is the point in time at which a hospital has enough GO Karts to modestly provide for the entirety of their population. Again, this number is unique to each hospital. As an example, Seattle Children’s would ideally like to have 10 GO Karts. Right now they only have one!
If you’re someone interested in supporting a hospital – keep this concept in mind! There are a ton of hospitals across the country we’ve not yet been able to support – but there’s also plenty of need still in the hospitals we currently do!
Big props go out to Jason and his community for helping to support the little guys being treated at Children’s New Jersey. You rock! One more GO Kart has been placed in service!