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January 13, 2023
Buffalo Bills safety, Damar Hamlin, is on a remarkable road to recovery following a cardiac arrest during a game last week. Football fans globally showed their support for Hamlin by donating to his ‘The Chasing M’s Foundation’ Community Toy Drive launched in 2020. On the day of the game, donations quickly rose from a few thousand into the millions. With donations now reaching over $8 million, Hamlin’s family has officially launched the Foundation’s Charitable Fund to thank supporters.
24-year-old Hamlin suffered a sudden cardiac arrest on the field during a ‘Monday Night Football’ game on January 2 against the Cincinnati Bengals. Now on the mend and released from a Buffalo, New York hospital on January 11, Hamlin expressed what the outpouring of support means to him.
“Watching the world come together around me on Sunday was truly an amazing feeling. The same love you all have shown me is the same love that I plan to put back in the world [and] more. Bigger than football,” he tweeted this week.
Hamlin established The Chasing M’s Foundation at the start of his career to positively impact his Western Pennsylvania community through toy drives, back-to-school drives, kids camps and more. “Damar started The Chasing M’s Foundation to be used as a vehicle to give back to the people who helped him get to where he is today and lift up the next generation of youth,” said Mario Hamlin, Damar’s father and executive director of the Foundation.
The Foundation’s first program was the Toy Drive, which received an explosion of donations taking funds from just $2,900 to over $8 million donations over the last week by supporters from around the world and high-profile figures from the NFL. The campaign intends to aid children who have been hardest hit by the pandemic.
Following the injection of funds, Hamlin’s family created the Foundation’s Charitable Fund in partnership with The Giving Back Fund – a philanthropic management organization – to facilitate the receipt, processing and allocation of donations to Hamlin’s programs as a 501(c)(3) verified non-profit organization.
In addition to the Fund, Hamlin launched a merchandising initiative with proceeds supporting first responders and the University of Cincinnati Trauma Center, where he was first taken after the incident. The shirts ask, ‘Did we win?’, reportedly the first words communicated by Hamlin through writing. The new funds are expected to go towards existing and new initiatives.
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