#Clips4Kids Raises Over $300,000 for St. Jude

Clips for kids? Do you mean haircuts? Mowing lawns?

The hashtag #Clips4Kids was started by members of the website Twitch.tv as a way to raise money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Fundraising for St. Jude is a big deal here in Acadiana, and many of us at The Dawg and our sister stations have a personal stake in the fight against cancer. We are happy to see the money come from any source, but what is Twitch?

Twitch.tv is basically my cable tv. I use the website daily. In short, it is a platform for people to live stream content of their choice. Though mostly used for video games, there are a variety of channels on the website that fall under different categories. Creating an account is free, and gives you access to viewing as well as streaming capabilities; anyone who is a member can stream.

Twitch started as a much smaller site named Justin.tv, after its creator Justin Kan, but has now grown into a service that sees 15 million users daily. Back in 2014, the site was acquired by Amazon. If you're interested, there's some good info on the history and growth of the website on its Wikipedia page.

Let's get to the point: charitable donations. Not everyone can get behind grown adults watching other grown adults play games, much less those who stream being able to make a living off the platform should they see success. However, I can't imagine anyone complaining about the numbers that the site generates for charity. According to Wikipedia, Twitch as a whole raised $8 million in charitable donations for causes such as Extra Life, which hosts a 24-hour gaming marathon to raise money. By 2017, the number of total donations over the website's lifetime grew to a staggering $75 million.

Some other charities that the platform donates money to include Doctors Without Borders, Whale and Dolphin Conservation, RED, the American Red Cross and many more.

Two of my favorite streamers, Ninja and Dr. Lupo, have each raised over $100k today in their time on air. You can view their channels here and here, respectively. Every dollar counts, though, and the total amount of donations across the entire site have reached $292,509.10 as of writing this sentence. Oh look, it has gone up to $292,947.25 before I could finish typing this sentence. I know, the title claims $300k, but trust me that at the rate the money is pouring in, they may even raise more than that by the time you've read this.

I'm extremely proud of this accomplishment as a member of the website. I love being a child for a few hours a day and playing video games. Things like this make me very emotional, and I'm happy to shed light on the issue.