Frogster Donates 82,000 Euro to Children in Bhutan

11 Feb, 2011

Here’s something to cheer you up at the beginning of your weekend. As we already know, gamers are in general a very generous bunch. And thanks to overwhelming support from the gaming community, games publisher Frogster can fund additional Save the Children projects.

Frogster began the charity project in mid-December 2010. Until the end of the promotion in January, players of Runes of Magic and Bounty Bay Online could purchase exclusive virtual mounts and a ship cover. All proceeds after VAT and fixed third-party costs are now funding Save the Children projects in Bhutan. Runewaker, the Taiwanese developer of Runes of Magic, waived its share of the sales for the mounts to support the charity effort on their part.

Yesterday, the publisher was able to hand over a cheque in the amount of 82,000 Euro thanks to the overwhelming support of the gaming community, more than doubling its previous charitable contribution following a similar charity drive last year.

In addition to setting up Remote Classrooms in the isolated mountain regions of Bhutan as originally planned, Save the Children can also implement further aid projects in the country thanks to the large donation.

Bhutan was largely isolated from the rest of the world until recently. Kathrin Wieland, German Executive Director of Save the Children, visited the country two years ago and knows the problems there: “In Bhutan, there are suddenly children surfing the Internet and zapping through 400 television channels. Their parents, on the other hand, are people who haven’t learnt to read or write. They have never in their lives been bombarded with advertising. In other words, what we have here is a clash of two ages of civilisation.”

With their on-site projects, Save the Children will assist children and their families in this transformation process, reducing the by-products which negatively affect the living conditions of adolescents, such as pollution, drug abuse, and crime.

On handing over the cheque, Seth Iorio, Member of the Executive Board of Frogster, commented on the outcome: “We have been impressed and inspired by the work of Save the Children in the mountain regions of Bhutan from the beginning. We are very happy that, through the support of our players, we can significantly extend the scope of our cooperative projects.”