Playing board games for Nepal

By now, most people have heard of the devastating earthquake that occurred in Nepal this past April.  According to Wikipedia, it ‘killed more than 8,800 people, injured more than 23,000 and had a magnitude of 7.8M.  It was the worst natural disaster to strike Nepal since the 1934 Nepal–Bihar earthquake.’  

As a result of this natural disaster and the many lives that it has taken away and affected, my friends Lu and Simon decided to host a board games event in order to raise money for Habitats for Humanity and Red Cross Canada for their Nepal’s reconstruction and relief efforts.  They even decided to match all donations made in advance and at the door (up to the first $1,000!) for the initiative.

Successful event held on Sunday, May 31, 2015 at OISE in Toronto

It felt a little nostalgic walking into the OISE classrooms again where I had classes three years ago

They hosted the four-hour event at one of the second-floor classrooms at the OISE building in downtown Toronto.  I arrived a little after noon and there were already a lot of people playing board games in the room!  They had an impressive selection of board games akin to a small board game cafe.  There were games like: Cranium, Settler’s of Catan, Resident Evil, Pandemic, Monopoly, The Resistance, Munchkins, Wonders, Bohnanza, King of Tokyo, Citadel, Monopoly Deal, Bang!, and Manila.

Lots of board games to choose from!

Trying to play to success in Pandemic

I spent the time that I was there playing Pandemic, a game that I’ve played a few times before and still enjoy.  I love how you have to work together as a team in order to erase the world from epidemic and disease.  We weren’t successful after two games but it was the fun that counted. 🙂

The event was a big success!  There were 40 people playing 40 different games in 4 hours.  They were able to raise a total of CAD $519 cash and the online donation amount at the time of writing sits at CAD $240 ($10 to tilt the campaign).  Great job, Lu, Simon, Vanessa, and all the friends who were involved in planning and making this event a great success!  Not only was it a creative way to channel funds to Nepal for the earthquake relief, but also it was a great afternoon of board games with new friends.

If you want to help out, you still can!  To contribute to the fundraising pool which ends this coming Sunday, June 7 at 11:50 pm EST, you can click here.

They also had three sponsors for the event: Snakes & Lattes, Habitat for Humanity, and Chatime