The Charity of Gamers

The Manifestation of Need

Home foreclosures, sick or hungry children, the need for coats, blankets, and shoes, unemployment, the Occupy Movement, credit card interest rates, medical care for the disadvantaged -- the list is long because the phrase is a loaded one! That long list has even more impact because it hits very close to the average persons emotional core; the people most in need of our help are the people least able to help themselves with children right at the top of the list.

The consequences of "these tough economic times" have manifested in what might be viewed as an unusual mixture of movements in an unlikely segment of the world's societies: Gamers.

The recent headlines about the Occupy Movement is a perfect example of this; depending upon who you listen to the original Occupy efforts are either about the war, civil rights, poverty, the economy, the nastiness that is perpetrated by the banking system, and a plethora of other reasons. It cannot be about all of them, right? Well, yes, actually it can, because in many respects it is about all of that and more on an individual level, and it should not surprise you to learn that a significant number of the people who make up the movement are gamers who are reaching out to try to find a way to have a greater impact upon the issues that concern them.

It makes a twisted sense if you really think about it -- gamers spend their leisure time playing games and being entertained by those games -- so the dichotomy of the state between happiness <> suffering, is a contrast that is incredibly easy to grasp and not surprisingly when it occurs it has the tendency of causing a severe reaction in the average gamer.

In another era that might have resulted in a personal gesture and that would have been the end of it, but in this modern era of the Internet and social media there is a sense of empowerment and obligation that easily transcends what was considered normal feelings of social responsibility in the past. More important than that is the feeling, the belief, and the need to somehow make the difference.

When President John F. Kennedy said "One person can make a difference and every person should try," he was not specifically speaking of protest, but rather he was voicing his support of the act of volunteering, either in your community, or in the world. Kennedy, the only elected president of the United States who is thought of throughout the world as Their President, is frequently credited with creating the Peace Corps, a volunteer-staffed government organization whose basic raison d'etre is summed up in its founding philosophy -- The mission of the Peace Corps includes three goals: providing technical assistance, helping people outside the United States to understand US culture, and helping Americans to understand the cultures of other countries. Somehow it managed to accomplish those goals without politicizing the issue and without serving as a propaganda tool!

The thing about the story of the Peace Corps is, Kennedy did not found it. Like most charitable efforts there is a deeper story and many unsung heroes involved, and while it is true that as the President he secured its place in the world as one of the very rare volunteer program run by the government, secured as a government agency, and nonetheless productive and effective, the reality is that there was an army of individuals behind its success.

Each program participant (aka Peace Corps Volunteer) is an American citizen, typically with a college degree, who works abroad for a period of 24 months after three months of training. Volunteers work with governments, schools, non-profit organizations, non-government organizations, and entrepreneurs in education, hunger, business, information technology, agriculture, and the environment. (10)

The origins of what would eventually become the Peace Corps actually sprang from a philosophical outlook that was a product of the post-war era, with Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, Jr. (D-Minnesota), being who introduced the first bill to create the Peace Corps in 1957 -- three years before Kennedy made his famous speech at the University of Michigan. While it is doubtful that any one of those politicians could have succeeded in the creation of the Peace Corps alone, that is not to say that one person cannot make the difference or make a change for the better -- sure it was not one person but consider this: it was a group of individuals, each one acting on their own moral and philosophical belief, that ultimately did make the difference!

If any one of those men had failed to act on their conviction, had failed to make the efforts that they did, the initiative that created the Peace Corps might have failed -- and giving credit where it is due, the program that was established by Executive Order 10924, issued by President John F. Kennedy on March 1st, 1961, and authorized by Congress on September 22nd, 1961, owes much to a long list of people, including a cadre of volunteers whose names we will probably never know, but who nonetheless made up a critical part of the movement. Want to bet that a lot of them were gamers?