You’ve heard of businesses using Pokemon Go to attract customers. Now, charities are at it too.
Myanmar groups raising funds for victims of flooding in the country have racked up more than $800 in donations so far through exploiting the virtual reality game, the Myanmar Times reports.
Pokemon Go, which encourages users to explore the real world through catching animated creatures, has been wildly successful in Myanmar since it launched earlier this month, with groups of players gathering in public places.
The other groups congregating in these areas in recent weeks? Charitable groups responding to floods that have claimed several lives and displaced hundreds of thousands across the country.
As citizens of the world’s most generous nation, Myanmar people don’t often need much incentive to give to charity. But the game has made donations even more frequent, according to groups who deliberately set up shop in areas popular with players and used in-game purchases to attract more users to the areas.
According to the Times, one group named Youth of Social Affairs, has placed ‘lure modules’, which make rare Pokemon abundant in a particular location, near sites where they have been raising money, including Mahabandoola Park on August 14.
“We just asked for donations on the street,” secretary Zaw Linn Htun told the Times. However, we thought most of the players would spend the whole day in the park, so we got the idea of selling them fried rice to raise more funds for flood victims…We’re going to donate the lot – investment and profit.”
Last week, Yangon-Based Youth Volunteer Network held an event titled ‘Let’s Donate While Playing’. Volunteers dressed as Pikachu, obviously.
“We raised K823,200 (about $800), going to places where players were gathered, like Mahabandoola Park, Momotaku, Fusan Chinese Temple and Sule [Pagodas],” organizer Khaing Wutt Yi told the Times.
Players and religious sites haven’t always mixed well so far. At least two pagodas have told players to leave, with one erecting special signs to make the message clear.
But if it’s for a good cause, we suspect you might get away with it…
