Donate your ‘done with’ games

March 16, 2015

As a console gamer, one of the simplest ways you can help others is through the donation of your ‘done with’ games to a community or welfare project.

There are a number of services that are keen to accept video games, including hospitals (eg. Royal Children’s Hospital in Brisbane), local government youth programs (eg. Manningham YMCA) and welfare community projects (eg. The Salvation Army’s AMP 614 Youth Bus).

While donating games may not initially seem to be all that helpful, consider the situation of long-term sick kids in a hospital. Creating an entertaining and engaging space for those kids who are experiencing a daily routine of needles, tests, suffering and discomfort, can improve the quality of life for them, providing joy and giving them something to take their minds off what they are going through.

Donating games is easy, too. If you and just 10 other friends or work colleagues are each willing to part with 8-10 games you no longer play, you’ll quickly have close to 100 games to donate–a significant offering to a hospital, community service or project, which rely on the generosity of others.

Before thinking about donating your games, it is important to get in contact with the service and find out what their needs are. Hospitals will often only want PG games that are suitable for kids. The Salvation Army’s Youth Bus is only equipped with Xbox consoles.

And be sure to factor in postage (or delivery). A huge pile of games may cost $30 or $50 to send via Australia Post. You could make a small financial contribution by each person–say, $3–part of the donation.