Last year Paul Grogan from Gaming Rules ran a face to face games convention to raise money for CYEN's Gamechangers programme, which uses games in rural and slum areas to develop their skills.  CYEN has hundreds of boardgamers in remote villages, that are part of clubs and board games have been very helpful to occupy children during the lockdown period this year.  This year Paul, due to lockdown conditions in the UK has been unable to run the normal GridCon but Virtual GridCon is now born, so that people can continue to enjoy boardgaming and children in Uganda can be supported and 100% of the money raised will go to support the work of Chrysalis Youth Empowerment Network.

In March, the President of Uganda ordered the lockdown preventing travel and a large proportion of people, mostly the most disadvantaged lost their ability to earn money.  While the President supported many with food during this lockdown period, many were left to fend for themselves and CYEN has been supporting families in Kampala and rural areas, most affected.  We need to try to raise £500 for each month to support the families in difficulty, until they can resume their work again.

While Uganda has few cases of the virus, there is a high risk of spread and the slum areas are most at risk, as many live there with medical conditions and children are very vulnerable to changing circumstances as many live day to day on what their parents can earn on that day.  We have discovered hundreds of children struggling to find food to eat and many are going on the streets looking for scrap metal to sell to buy food, which can be very dangerous for them.

In a normal year Chrysalis trains youth to be social entrepreneurs, but this year we have shifted our focus to additionally help these children who are starving, by providing their families with cooking oil, soap, charcoal and salt.  Now that the government's food has run out, we may also have to support them with food as well.  We are also supporting with medical costs and helping them think positively about how they can make the lockdown period successful for them, despite the challenges.

We hope that Virtual GridCon is a great success and people are able to share at least some of the atmosphere of a face to face convention, meeting gaming friends and enjoying learning and playing new games.  At CYEN's centre, we play board games with our residents throughout the week and last week we beat Pandemic for the first time!

If you are able to donate, then your name will go into a draw to win prizes donated by some generous games companies.  Full details of how you can win these prizes can be found here but please ensure that you give your name, if you wish to win - https://bit.ly/37SQvLC

Please ensure that you email Paul Grogan on paul@gridcon.co.uk with your name and address details, advising him of the amount of the donation, so it can be traced.  

***PLEASE NOTE ALL DONATIONS RECEIVED AFTER MIDNIGHT ON SUNDAY 28th JUNE UK TIME WILL NOT QUALIFY FOR THE CHARITY RAFFLE DRAW***

For more information about what we do at Chrysalis, then please go to   http://cyen.org.uk/gamechangers