Episode 159!  Todd Muldrew from Queen City Game Club joins us to talk about his group as well as their involvement in Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School program- and gives you an opportunity to get involved.  Please give it a listen!

Please note: We say 158, we messed up – it’s 159!

This Week’s Topics Include:

News

• RIP: Michael Nyqvist
• Happy Birthday: Mel Brooks!
• Star Wars:  Ron Howard named director, Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) gets acting lessons; George Lucas to build museum in LA
• Study Results:  Older dads raise geekier kids
• Community Calendar – check it out here!

Guardables

• Carol the Cat: Blood Drive, Fargo
• Giddygeeker : Brit TV (Doctor Who, Orphan Black, Graham Norton), GLOW (Netflix)
• Tiffles: Babalu Restaurant Review, Victorian Tea and the best Tea Houses around

About Todd Muldrew and Queen City Game Club

In His Own Words:  I’m a father of two (girl and boy), husband, attorney and gamer (both video and board games). I grew up in Knoxville, TN, and moved to Charlotte in 2005. I’ve been President of the Queen City Game Club since 2014.

Queen City Game Club was founded in 2011, and we are a community of new and experienced gaming enthusiasts organized to promote euro and strategy games in Charlotte, by providing professional and engaging experiences that encourage exposure to and growth in euro and strategy gaming as a mainstream recreation.

We host several monthly meetup events in the Charlotte area, including our original Beers and Boardgames event for adults at the Waldhorn Restaurant in South Charlotte.

We don’t just play games. We support a community of people who enjoy connecting with others through boardgames.

What do we play? We play a wide variety of euro and strategy games, including:
Euro games like Settlers of Catan, Agricola and Puerto Rico
Strategy games like Dominion, Pandemic and Small World
Many other popular modern boardgames like The Resistance, Ticket to Ride, Lords of Waterdeep and more!

Find out ore about Queen City Game Club on Meetup and Facebook.

Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School

Queen City Game Club is continuing our sixth year of teaching at-risk elementary school kids how to play board games. We work with Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School program to teach games to kids in grades K to 8. Freedom Schools is a national program developed by the CDF to promote literacy for children at risk of failure. The classes we work with are at the Freedom School at Montclaire Elementary. Volunteers from our club work with approximately 100 K-8 students to teach them to play board games. This program will give these students an opportunity to develop literacy, critical thinking, logic and strategic decision making in a positive and cooperative environment through the use of board games. We have 7 days where we work with the kids for 2 hours.

This fall, we will also be participating in Extra Life, with video and board gamers from all over Charlotte. Extra Life is November 4th this year. Extra Life raises money for Children’s Hospitals all over the world. Last year, the Charlotte team raised nearly $10,000 for Levine Children’s Hospital, and we hope to continue to grow this effort with our partners.

More information about Freedom Schools can be found here. A video about the Montclaire program is here.

To join the Extra Life Facebook page, click here.

Originally recorded 06/28/2017