DesithonMerchDesithon is our stream's annual charity event where we schedule a 24 hour stream of games that the community wants to see us play. We usually hold Desithon on the first weekend in August. In the months leading up to Desithon, our community decides together on which games to play and which charity we want to sponsor. This way, we put together a program that the community wants to see and sponsor a charitable cause that is dear to our hearts. During the Desithon stream, every penny we earn from bits, subs, and ad revenue all goes directly to the charity we sponsor!
Throughout the months of May and/or June, Desi will open channels in our Discord server. Anyone there can nominate a charity for us to support for the event as well as games that they would like to see played during the event! Submissions are now closed, but keep a list for when submissions open around May-June.
In our Discord server, throughout June and/or July, we'll poll all of the nominations made the preceding month. The charity with the most votes at the end of our month-long poll is the charity we decide as a group to sponsor, and the most popular games in the polls will be selected for Desi to play during the event! By deciding on which cause matters to us all most as a group, as well as determining which games are the most popular, we lay the groundwork for making this year's charity event as successful as possible!
Near the end of July, Desi will announce which charity will win the poll, and he will put together the schedule for the upcoming event. If you'd like to see the program for this past year's event, check out this page! Then, during the rest of July and leading up until the big day, Desi will be preparing for the event with whatever free time he has (confirming all games run on hardware, making sure controllers are properly paired for each game, arranging the layouts for the event, making the Tiltify campaign, working on surprise projects for the event, etc.). Putting together each of these charity events is a lot of time and effort on Desi's part, but it's always worth the labor of love considering the significant amount of charity we have been able to raise each year, as well as the fact that an important cause to us all receives such substantial support.
The idea for Desithon naturally came about from being inspired by other charity events held on Twitch, while also observing that streamers often organize their own 24 hour events (Barbathon, etc.). Desi put the two ideas together: Every 24 hour event our stream has held has been a charity event. We started planning our first Desithon event about a year after we had our first stream.
To provide some context, Desi has always had an interest in giving back to the community. Throughout the span of 2009-2016, Desi spent about three years living in India. For the first year he was there, Desi volunteered in hospitals, orphanages, and schools for the highly underprivileged. For the remainder of the two years he was there, Desi helped establish an NGO that still runs to this day. Sadly, we can't share the name of the NGO (to prevent doxxing Desi), but essentially the organization enrolls highly impoverished children in schools and provides these students with tuition, textbooks, uniforms, lunch money, etc. The program also reaches out to parents in the neighborhood who can offer these underprivileged students daily tutoring. Many of these students have been performing at the top of their classes with the help the NGO offers them.
And so, with this interest in humanitarianism, we decided to plan for our first charity event! We never expected the event to grow so quickly and raise as much money as we have. Check out the site below to find records of our previous events!