Zach Wigal is a 29 year old who once had over 5,000 video games in his parents basement . . . but it’s not what you think!
The founder of the nonporfit organization Gamers Outreach, Zach helps kids who are stuck in bed at hospitals to get their mind off their stress and check-out in a video game or two.
Zach shares, “We noticed that a lot of the video games (at hospitals) were getting stuck in playrooms, and because of that, there was a whole segment of the hospital population that was, sort of, limited to whatever it was they had access to their bedside environment.”
Eventually, Zach and the Wigal’s Foundation were able to transfer a lot of the video games onto portable video game carts to provide to more than a million kids every year.
They call the gaming consoles “GOKarts,” and they feature an array of video games for the young patients to enjoy as a “source of fun and relief during stressful and difficult times.”
Doctors have even started prescribing “video game time” to certain patients, and they’ve seen a drop in anxiety as well as less of a need for pain killers in some patients.
(MSN)