Extra Life is a Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals fundraising program within the gaming community. Participants fundraise year-round and pledge to game for 24 hours with one goal: to save and improve the lives of sick and injured kids. Funds raised stay local to help pediatric patients at 170 Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals across North America. Since 2008, Extra Life has raised more than $30 million for member hospitals. The movement, formed by gamers bonded by passion, is committed to saving and improving the lives of local kids.

Extra Life came about when Thomas shared his experience with our Computer Literacy class. We were all very inspired by his passion and decided to host an event at STEAM to help raise money for the Children's Miracle Network and Cook Children's Hospital. Thomas and Edgar created this video for Mr. Johnson and Mr. Chappotin so that the event could be approved.

When Thomas was in the 3rd grade, he met a girl named Kylee, his sister and her were best friends. A little while later, the doctors found out she had cancer, she stopped going to our school and later moved to Fort Worth. The last time he got to see her it was at her birthday party, in August of 2012, there was water slides and it was so much fun. But he remembers, waking up February 13, 2013 and hearing that she had passed away. His mom told him "She said she was ready to go" and her parents "It's ok" and then she passed away. Losing a close friend at that age was very hard, it definitely changed his life. Later on when a friend died at my school, I had already been through that process so it wasn't as hard for him as it was for other people. It gave him the ability to help people cope with his death. This gave him the PASSION make this a thing, it gave him confidence that he needed to get this going.

Chris, Matthew, Trey, and all the others had started to do it when Thomas mentioned it about a year ago to all of us. His story really hit all of us deep and we felt his pain because all of us had lost a friend in middle school. And now Thomas has given us a way to make a change. Extra Life has impacted everyone in a way from the kid who plays Xbox to the kid sitting in a hospital waiting to get better. With this organization we hope that as a group we can raise at least 5,000 for the kids center at Cook Children's: A Children's Miracle Network hospital. In the kids center there are no doctors allowed and it gives the kid who are stuck in the hospital a chance to feel like.... normal kids.