I have returned to streaming, but not for Extra Life–at least not this week. This week (actually start back on Saturday, February 20) I am focusing on raising money to help fellow Texans affected by the recent winter storm.
I got extremely lucky. I was able to go to my parents’ place, who had power, and we had no pipes burst in the house. In fact, we were able to save all of our fridge and freezer food with a combination of using my parents’ fridge and burying our food in the snow. Many, many Texans weren’t and aren’t as lucky.
Many had to throw their groceries out, which is a huge issue for the 1 in 7 Texans that are already food insecure. Thanks to busted pipes and, in some cases, busted water mains, many Texans are struggling just to find water. Some Texans are looking for shelter because they can’t get into their homes due to water damage and plumbers looking at record backlogs.
Insurance won’t cover all of this. Federal aid will take far too long. Texans need help now.
Personally, I am focusing on two local DFW organizations that are helping: The Feed the People Dallas Mutual Aid Fund and The North Texas Food Bank. If you are interested in helping people on a statewide scale, I would direct you to the fundraisers of M.J. Hegar, former candidate for U.S. Senator, who is splitting donations to food banks across the state, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s, who is splitting donations to food banks, mutual aid, and homeless-focused organizations.
As there is no clean way to track donations to these organizations like in Extra Life, I am doing something different with my stream. On Twitch, you earn channel points just for watching. Over time, you can spend these on the channel you earn them on. With that in mind, I’ve decided that for every 1,000 points spent on my channel, I will donate $1.
On Saturday, we used that method to add $39 to my planned donation of $50. If we hit over $50, I will match whatever ends up in the channel donation pool, plus front the $22 dollars of revenue that I have setting in my account as well.
This means that you can help raise money by just watching me on Twitch and spreading the word. The goal is to get people in the channel and raise awareness for these various funds that need help (I have chat commands of !donate, !texas, !food, and !water set up to help this).
I am playing Satisfactory, a game focused on resource and power management (and at times, fighting through overloading the power grid you build). Stream times will be Monday (today!) and Wednesday at 9 PM CST and go a little past midnight each stream.
If you donate and want to brag, just shoot me a tweet over @ndtex or DM me on Instagram @ndtex as well with a picture of your receipt. I will make my donation at the conclusion of my Wednesday stream to both organizations and we will see just how much good we managed to do in a quick time!
Thank you in advance for helping Texans in need!