First Time Extra Lifer, Austin Shares his “Why”
Austin Bain’s twin sister Ashley grew up with health concerns that often brought her to their local children’s hospital. This year, he joined the nonprofit Extra Life for the first time this year, to support kids like his sister by doing something he loves – gaming!
What is Extra Life?
Extra Life combines gaming and fundraising, and uses the passion of the gaming community to rally support for Dayton Children’s. Participants (known affectionately as “Extra Lifers”) fundraise year-round and pledge to play with one goal in mind: to save and improve the lives of sick and injured children.
At Dayton Children’s, our Extra Life gaming community has raised nearly $170,000 since 2010, and they are proud to use their love for gaming to support their local children’s hospital.
“Gaming is a very big passion of mine,” says Austin. “It’s something that, throughout my life, I’ve always held near to my heart. I’m happy that I can now use this hobby of mine to help out the community as much as I can.”
Supporting Dayton Kids from Abroad
When you sign up for Extra Life, you choose which hospital to support, no matter where you play from. Austin is the only participant (that we know of) who supports Dayton Children’s and lives in Germany!
He shares, “While finishing my undergraduate I had the chance to study abroad in Germany for a semester and loved the country so much that I decided to try to stay.” He enrolled in a master’s program and got a job in the automotive field in Germany and has been living there since!
Austin started 2021 on the right foot by raising $700 in January! “Originally I had a plan to set up a Twitch channel in order to stream and raise funds for Extra Life.” Austin shares, “I streamed for about a week total. Then I started to spread the word to the members of an online gaming community that I am a part of. Through their combined generosity, I’ve been able to raise $700 thus far, and I hope to also reach out to family and friends that I have back in the United States, as well as implement social media at some point soon.“
To date, Austin is crushing his goals raising $1,000 and he’s not stopping! You can support Austin and read more of his story on his fundraising page.
Both Twins Help Dayton Area Kids
Another fun twist to this story? Ashley, Austin’s sister, is now a proud member of the Dayton Children’s Child Life team! Ashley says her experiences as a child needing hospital care made her want to help kids going through the same thing.
We just love that both twins grew up to use their passion for helping sick kids in different ways!
