Relay for Life (RFL) is an event designed to raise money to fight cancer, an event which for years has been increasingly successful in terms of donations both in RL (which now involves 20 countries beyond the U.S.) and in Second Life, where it is known as RFLSL (see even there) and where the more than 222,000 US dollars collected in 2010 were followed by a further 373,000 US$ (equivalent to just less than 75 million Linden dollars) collected this year after the weekend of 16 and 17 July, the culmination of all the events. We're talking about real money, not peanuts, which will finance the activities of the American Cancer Association and has been collected through the efforts of 140 teams that have set up Sims and events to encourage users of the Linden Lab platform to open their wallet, succeeding very well.

For the record the top five teams in terms of collection have been Amaretto Ranch Breedables (79,502 dollars collected), Friends Fighting Cancer (26,659 dollars), Fashion for Life (20,230 dollars), Home & Garden Expo (16,219 dollars) and Goreans in Relay For Life (13,371 dollars, despite the widespread view that Gor in Second Life to mean only a sterile RPG), with General Event Donations (10,823 dollars) to close the list of who has raised more than 10,000 US$ (find all the information here).

As reported also by Beq Janus on Primperfect, throughout this year there were events in 40 sims (41 in 2010), followed by 4 blogs (you can find them here), which were devoted some machiminas that you can find on youtube, another confirmation of the interest that the content created by users of a virtual world like Second Life can lead when you combine a "real" objective as the RFL, but also the need, for those wants to make the most of these platforms, to grow in time the reference community, just think that in 2004 the first event of RFL in SL collected $ 2,000 US dollars and the following year RLFSL, involving sim 6 and a total of 315 avatars, rose to 5,000 US$ and that from 2008 (year of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the explosion of the world financial and economic crisis) to 2011 the collection has grown by over 73%.

In the graph you can see the progress of fundraising in Second Life by RFL in recent years: whose who write that SL and virtual worlds are good for nothing, are empty and nobody uses them, please take this into account, who knows that could be good at least to get a better idea of the potential of these tools, niche, perhaps, but very efficient in some areas such as Mondivirtuali.it has been saying repeatedly in recent years.