GISH History
The competition began informally in 2010 when Misha Collins, best known for playing the angel Castiel on the American television series Supernatural, was asked to engage his audience to help Supernatural move from second place to first in the People's Choice Awards voting. Collins posted a message on Twitter, declaring that if the show won, he had been promised a rhinoceros to share with everyone who helped by voting for the show. When Supernatural won the competition Collins asked his followers to send him self-addressed stamped envelopes into which he put scavenger hunt prompts written on the backs of jigsaw puzzle pieces from a puzzle depicting a rhino. Soon, participants began to respond to Collins's "absurd" requests.
Collins enjoyed this exercise so much that he decided to create an official scavenger hunt in 2011. He established the event's website and gave it its name, the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen, calling its acronym, GISHWHES, "the ugliest acronym the world has ever seen". According to Collins, the primary reason for developing the competition was that he "loved the idea of thousands of people from all over the world connecting to create incredible things". He hoped to use GISHWHES to encourage participants "to do good in the world".
GISHWHES had world wide appeal. Thousands of participants representing somewhere upward of 69 different countries take part and over the years it has broken several Guinness World Records. In the books for 2011 was 'Largest Photo Scavenger Hunt'. In 2012 'Most Pledges for a Campaign/to Complete a Random Act of Kindness' was broken and over the following years a further 5 records have followed.
In recent years GISHWHES has evolved into the GISH hunt we see in 2019. The tasks are mostly based in the concept of kindness. They invite a level of creativity with cooperation with the overarching community a goal. If a person wants to play and doesn't have 15 friends willing to go, that person can be assigned a team. All they have to do is indicate it during registration. The event has donated to women's shelters, blood drives, coat drives and food banks. Hundreds of thousands of dollars has been raised for charities as well as the tally of parks and beaches cleaned, blood, bone marrow and hair donations and support for our emergency and military personnel. It takes the theme of the Supernatural show of helping people to another level.
There is one amazing prize for the most successful team. Previous prizes have included joining Misha Collins for fun and adventures in Iceland, Costa Rica and New Zealand. This year the prize takes place in Laos. The Winning Team is travelling with Giles Duley to tour the beautiful country and work with the incredible women working to clear land mines in Laos. It will be a life-changing trip of sight-seeing, service and adventure. However if the main prize is not secured there are a lot of follow-up prizes such as certificates of greatness, being added to the GISH Hall of Fame and inclusion in the coffee table book of the year's exploits as well as knowing you have done something positive for another.
From GISH to Random Acts
There is a participation fee that goes to Random Acts , a non-profit organization co-founded by Collins that promotes random acts of kindness. The organization has contributed to charities such as Red Cross and various other charities and projects that focus on empowerment and opportunity. Projects like Dreams to Acts have aided in relief efforts in Haiti and educational development in Nicaragua. Caught in the Act a program geared towards recognizing ordinary people committing great acts of kindness and Class Act which recognizes schools for acts of community kindness. In addition, there is the SPNFamily Crisis Support Network which aids in mental health efforts such as depression and addiction and the GISH: 'Change a life' crowd fundraisers which have helped support wounded veterans, rehome Syrian refugees, save a school in South Africa and support the recovery of Rwandan genocide survivors.