#IngressFS Community Contributions – Q1 2019

Ingress is a game that is more than a game. Through it, people can discover new places, meet new people, learn about the historic and cultural highlights of a city, and become passionate and more engaged with their communities, creating an enjoyable atmosphere that can surprise anyone scanners on and off as well.

For the 5th year now, agents all over the world have held Ingress First Saturday events to present an opportunity for agents to meetup, get to engage with new players, and strengthen the bonds between the two factions. #IngressFS has become an unmatchable chance to get to know the person behind the scanner, as the events can bring factions together in a non competitive setup, and even promotes organizing activities to benefit the cities that host these events.

During the first quarter of the year, we have seen many of the participant sites make contributions to their communities, and these are some of the most impressive feats:

Money and Food Donations

When you’re part of a community, many of the good things you can experience are brought up by having the people come together joining efforts and resources. This is the case with the Canberra, Davis and Kingston communities in Australia and the US, who took their #IngressFS as an opportunity to raise some money to give back to their cities. Other good examples of this strength by union could be seen in Boston and Calgary, from the US and Canada communities, where the agents collected food and took it to some local food banks. Impressive and heart warming efforts.

Supporting a Cause

Hunger and poverty are not the only things that cause great impact in our communities. Diseases can be very damaging on so many levels, even if not all of their effects are visible or easy to spot. Because of this, the San Diego community in California decided to focus on supporting the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), a health organization that supports survivors of suicide loss and funds research and programs that advocate for public policies involving mental health. To integrate the #IngressFS and awareness for this cause, the organizers created a banner with information about the AFSP and provided opportunities to donate. Let’s keep spreading love and support!!

The Clear Field Challenge

Motivated by the Centauro Squad, agents from the Latin American cities of Iquique, Vitória da Conquista, Monterrey, San Luis de Potosí and Mexico City decided to step up to the #ClearFieldChallenge. During more than one of their #IngressFS, agents took the time to pickup garbage and clear up the locations where they gathered, be it parks, their town plazas, showing the big respect and appreciation they had towards their communities and the real life side of the gameboard.

Cultural Highlights

Ingress is about exploring cities and getting to know about the places you get to visit. Taking this into account, the Jackson, Guayaquil and Kyiv communities in the US, Ecuador and Ukraine decided to promote their local art and history during the #IngressFS they hosted. It was also quite impressive learning about the activities in Montreal and Higashikagawa, where the organizers coordinated a Mission Day and a dead drop hunt while enjoying their respective local festivals.

  

Other really cool projects shared during the past events included an excursion to a local radio station, an OPR Bootcamp, some biocard exchanges, sponsored prizes and special recognition to the agents who got the highest FS stats, and even a really cool XF Field Art. Moreover, some communities reported how the XF relationships have gotten better thanks to the #IngressFS, making all very proud of this achievement.


Check out other pictures and social media posts  by searching for the hashtag #IngressFS to find out more about these amazing experiences and start thinking… What will your contribution for the next #IngressFS be?

(And if you need some extra inspiration, we suggest you read the Gauteng FS Community Contribution experience, as told by themselves below)

Highlighted Contribution: Ingress GautengFS Charity Drives

Ingress First Saturday is all about community and what is more community centered than helping those in need? For the past 3 years, GautengFS, South Africa, has held a charity drive in December as part of our regular IngressFS event. It was the brainchild of our Resistance POC, Queery. The whole year we are focused on fun and rewarding our members with prizes (sponsored by the players themselves). The idea of the charity drive was to take the focus off winning a prize and help those in need. And what better time to do it than just before Christmas?!

Instead of donating items for the competition, our members were asked to donate toiletries, hygiene products and other necessities to help children in need. The event is held in collaboration with Child Welfare Tshwane (previously “Pretoria Kinder- en Gesinsorgvereniging”), a registered, non-profit child protection organisation that has been caring for, protecting and empowering vulnerable children in the city of Pretoria (Tshwane) since 1918. Not only are they a haven of safety for abandoned children, they assist with adoptions, Family Reunification, Family preservation and Legal Protection.

All the items that are donated by our agents goes to five Drop-in centres where children from poorer communities are accommodated after school. Services at these centres include the provision of a daily balanced meal (sometimes the only one for the day), homework support, life-skill training and support groups attending to a variety of needs. Additionally, holiday programmes are offered and Early Childhood Development activities form a crucial part of the programme.

These Drop-In centres are overlooked during the holiday period, since most of the philanthropic focus shifts to the orphanages and to handing out toys. You may wonder why, being Christmas time, we didn’t ask for donations of toys. When you are in a home with many other children, everything is shared. Resources are scarce and soaps, face cloths, deodorants, toothbrushes etc are all shared. To be able to have toiletries of your own, is a rarity, but extremely empowering. We found that giving these items made the children happier than any toy would have.

Please feel free to read more about Child Welfare Tshwane at www.childwelfare.co.za

 

If you’d like to see your community’s contributions added to our next post, don’t forget to submit the details along with your Event’s score submission! See you next time!