It’s that time of year again at Mox Boarding House — time to set up our holiday Giving Trees and announce the beneficiaries!

Mox’s Giving Tree is a tradition we started at our Ballard location in 2012. We wanted to share our desire to connect with the community, and give our customers an opportunity to join in on giving back. Each year our in-house charitable program, Mox ENGAGE, picks a local non-profit to be the beneficiary of our Giving Tree. The nonprofits fall in line with the following areas: health/mental health, education, and community-building. We often pick a program within the community that we know can use a large supply of games, as well as specific non-gaming items to create our wish list. Then we ask our patrons and employees to help fulfill the items on that wish list.

In our first year, we were blown away by the generosity of our patrons — all the tags and their gifts were donated within three days! We quickly added more tags to the tree, and again, all wishes were fulfilled within the following week. The success of our first year of offering a Giving Tree is the impetus to us bringing it back year after year. This is our fifth year, and we look forward to witnessing the generosity of our amazing gamer community!

This year, our Ballard location is hosting a tree for YouthCare. YouthCare has been providing a continuum of care to homeless youth around the Seattle area, for over 40 years now. They work hard to help homeless youth get off the streets and preparing for life through many programs, like transitional housing, a drop-in center with three hot meals served a day, counseling, job training, and GED programs. They have 11 locations, and thus, many opportunities for connecting through games. We are happy to offer a Giving Tree to help bring cheer to the young folks who are working to better their lives with the help of YouthCare. If you ’re not able to make it in to our store to get a gift tag, you may also go directly to the YouthCare website to make an online donation, or purchase something off of their Amazon Wishlist, and have it sent directly to their programs.

 Our Bellevue location is hosting a tree for the Rainier Community Center. The Rainier Community Center is part of the Seattle Parks and Recreation department that offers before and after-school programming, as well as teen programs, like their late-night programs that occur every Friday and Saturday night. They serve a culturally diverse population, which includes a wide age range of people (toddlers to senior citizens). Some of these gifts will go to specific kids, and some will go towards the teen center and game room. They have an eager staff of game enthusiasts who look forward to teaching youth new games, and connecting on a deeper lever through fun and meaningful ways.

Both Mox Boarding House locations will be accepting donations through the 14th of December. Donations will be delivered to both programs by the 15th of December.

As a thank you to our generous patrons, we will be giving donors a 15% off one item coupon that will be valid through the end of January 2018. Mox ENGAGE will be donating gaming supplies, a monetary donation, and a follow-up game training day for each of our beneficiaries.

We hope your holidays are spent doing the things you love most, and we thank you for helping us spread the holiday cheer for some great kids in our town!

Happy Holidays from Mox Boarding House!