Every year when I tell people that I’m taking time off of work to stay at home in the middle of summer to do a thing called GISH, the inevitable next question is: “What is GISH?”
The Greatest International Scavenger Hunt is a silly craft-driven scavenger hunt made for good. Your entry fee goes to help organizations help those in need. Last year’s entry fee went to saving a rainforest that is a habitat for many endangered animals. This year’s? We raised enough money to buy over 10,000 meals for children out of school due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
There’s also always a Change-a-Life item that gets dropped during GISH in which Giles Duley handpicks an area of the world that needs financial backing. We’ve saved a renowned ballet school in Africa when it’s owner found out that she had terminal cancer. We’ve also funded gardens for women to grow and sell vegetables in Rwanda.
I’ve dressed as a Stormtrooper doing stunts at the X-Games, and other Summer Camp activities. I’ve made a portrait on a petri dish, which seemed like a good idea at the time until I found it a week later trying to figure out what that smell in my room was. It’s become a GISH right of passage to get a hot glue gun burn. Enduring the unreasonable pain and suffering of getting glitter in your eyes becomes an unspoken sign of respect. And yet I sign up for this Good Trouble again year after year because it gets me out of my mundane zone of comfort.
