Next Saturday (27th April) a charismatic, young woman with a soft Scottish accent and a penchant for making fun of herself will shave all the hair off her head in public to raise money the ME Association.
What make this so unusual is that Katy will be livestreaming her act of self-sacrifice on the gaming platform, Twitch, and the donations are pouring in.
Katy works full-time as a Twitch streamer. She’s known to her 10,910 followers there as ‘the Scottish Geek’ and she would rather we keep her Twitching details entirely separate from her private life.
We did discover, though, that she suffered from post-viral fatigue syndrome for nine months after going down with covid in November 2022 and that she used to work in retail. Katy says she owes her recovery to her husband and parents. “They looked after me and got me back on my feet once I'd recovered.”
All set up for streaming, Katy is pictured at home.
Her friend for the past four years – fellow Twitcher Michael who has Long Covid and goes by the screen name of ‘Cham’ – told me: “It started when I found her stream through her playing one of my favourite games of all time, ‘Dark Souls’,
“Since then, I've been able to witness Katy go from a small streamer, albeit with a very nice community, to being able to build her stream large enough to go full time, quitting her retail job.
“With that, she has built an incredibly dedicated community, full of like-minded people, where making friends is easy. People who truly care for each other, which is a beautiful thing to find in the online world. Without discovering Katy's welcoming stream and community, I don't think I would have nearly as much comfort in my life as I currently do.
“I think anyone with ME who is interested in seeing Katy shave her head for The ME Association absolutely should come in and say hi.”
Michael added: “Finding people who truly understand ME are incredibly rare to find. So you would be welcomed with open arms.
“Katy is one of my only friends who actually asks how I'm doing with my illness, even though the answer is usually the same, she continues to ask. I think that says a lot about her character.”
I can only remember one other Twitch partner creating a livestream fundraiser for the ME Association. In September 2022, someone called Dominique set one up and, so far as I can remember, her final figure ran into four figures. Let’s hope both Dominique and Katy are trendsetters!
Katy will livestream her head shave next Saturday. Just check out the time of her head shave by using the following link:
If you’d prefer to go direct to her ME Association donations page, it’s here:
https://donate.tiltify.com/7b54073b-93ce-4dfc-8258-794e4b223949
Thank you very much.
Tony Britton
Senior Fundraising Consultant, The ME Association
tony.britton@meassociation.org.uk Mob: 07393 805566
