Hi everybody, Ace of Hearts Vox here and welcome to another First Suits Friday video. If there's one thing I love about the furry fandom, it's its spirit of being able to come together to become an incredible force for good. That's right, in today's video we're talking about times the furry fandom has made a positive impact. So let's get started! Today we're going to start with one of my absolute favorite stories, the story of Fernando's. Since 2006, Fernando de Carvalho of Fernando's Cafe in Pittsburgh has helped host attendees of Anthropon, one of the largest furry conventions in the whole world. Every year the cafe would be specially decorated and when I visited the cafe for myself, it was incredible. There were even furry themed menu items served in souvenir dog balls, and there were specially marked seating areas and water stations for fur suitors to sit and relax and recover. Anyways, back to the story. So one year some locals were harassing Anthropon attendees and who came to their aid, but Fernando de Carvalho. While he was trying to intervene, he ended up getting hit in the head with a brick, and this ended up causing a fractured skull. However, his efforts went neither unnoticed nor unappreciated. When Fernando's cafe fell on hard times and was on the verge of closing its doors, Anthropon attendees banded together to help raise money to save the restaurant. After raising over $20,000 in donations, the restaurant was able to stay open and it even helped with some of the owners financial debt. Fernando's is alive and well today and has become a bit of a local landmark in Pittsburgh, and it's become an integral part of the quintessential Anthropon experience. Next, I should definitely talk about charities. I'll talk about this one relatively quickly, but it's pretty awesome. I mean, I'd always knew that conventions were typically run as non-profit organizations and that they made several donations to charity, typically donating to groups that concentrate on things like wildlife conservation as well as other animal-related causes. What I didn't know was the amount of money that the fandom has actually raised over time for charities. According to Wiki for the largest fund-raising organizations of the fandom as of December 6, 2017 are Midwest Fairfests, Anthropon, Eurofurns, Further Confusion, Furry Weekend Atlanta, and Menfit Fermi. I don't think I've ever heard of that last one, but it is simply amazing how much money the fandom has been able to raise over time to donate to causes that'll make a positive impact on our world. Our last story today was actually a fairly recent one. At biggest little furcon 2018 in Reno, Nevada, a girl named Emma was attending the convention with her mom. She was dressed in a store-bought tiger mask emol, as well as some paws, very simple ones, but it's enough to become a complete character. So at one point during the convention, the post emerges on Twitter. The post describes that Emma ended up missing the group-first-suit photo for the convention because she was bullied by some adult attendees about the quality of her first suit. So first of all, we are all in animal costumes. There is no reason to ever take this fandom so seriously that you feel the need to bully someone. Period! A furry convention is a special place where I've always gone to escape for the weekend. I've always been able to go there and be by complete self without any fear of being judged. If I was a kid and had that kind of bad experience for the fandom off the bat, I would have completely missed out on a community that has become an incredibly important part of my life. But I digress. Back to the story. So afterward, it had started to spread online about Emma's unfortunate mishap. Furry's attending BLFC replied in mass, encouraging them to come back and enjoy the rest of the convention. After Emma and her mother came back, Eno, the first-suiter behind telephone, organized a special group photo shoot with a whole bunch of amazing fur suiters. And they even allowed Emma to borrow one of their tiger fur suits for the photo-op. You have no idea how happy I am to see the furry fandom come together and take what would have been just another bad experience and transform it into a cherished memory. So those are some of my favorite ways the furry fandom has come together to make positive things happen. I hope you enjoyed it. Can you think of any ways the fandom has impacted you personally in a positive way? I'd love to hear about it in the comments down below. I do read every single comment and I try to reply to as many as possible. And if you really enjoyed this video, go ahead and hit like and subscribe down below for new videos every week. Also, if you want to directly support the content that I produce on this channel, my merch store and Patreon links are in the description box below. And speaking of patrons, I want to thank these beautiful Patreon supporters for producing today's video. And I want to thank these lovely patrons for sponsoring today's video. Well, that's all I got for you guys today. Thanks again for watching everybody. My name's Aisa Parts Fox and I will see you all in the next video.