Who doesn’t love to wake up to a bit of happy news on Monday? While the gaming community can often be populated by toxic individuals, sometimes enough pearls shine through that truly make the world a better place.
Such is the case with Rendog, a Bloemfontein-born Minecraft streamer currently based in the UK. With a healthy following on both YouTube and the streaming platform Twitch, Rendog set about organising an impressively large charity fundraiser over the weekend that managed to raise close to R2 million that will all go towards South Africans who are struggling to make ends meet.
Rendog, who’s real name is being withheld to respect his want for anonymity, began the fundraising efforts alongside the charity SOS Africa and fellow Minecraft streamer Charles “Grian” Batchelor. The charity stream, which allowed viewers to donate money towards the cause while watching the content being produced, managed to pull in millions of rands in just a weekend, going over double the goal amount of R550,000.
Due to the unbelievable generosity of thousands of people from all over the world tonight, we raised over £75000 for @SOS_Africa during our charity stream with Grian. To put it into perspective, thats over 300000 hot meals for South Africans in desperate need. THANK YOU ALL! RD pic.twitter.com/1wJE4V8IYD
— Rendog (@renthedog) May 10, 2020
As the night went on and more and more people kept donating to ensure the streamers would keep playing, over 700,000 people tuned in and donated cash towards the cause. Speaking to Business Insider South Africa, SOS Africa founder Matt Crowcombe said, “We had absolutely no idea we would receive this response. The funds raised will feed many thousands over the coming months.”
“We were all completely overwhelmed with emotion,” he said. “Our staff in South Africa were following the event and were constantly in floods of tears.” Well, isn’t that a lovely little nugget of news to start your week off? Sure, the world is a bit of a dire place right now but at least there are still good people out there doing what they can to ease the pain of others.