It is day two of the post-Apocalyptathonic era. Against all odds, the world survived the Apocalyptathon – but not without serious devastation. Millions of children in developing countries are without proper education, unable to help themselves out of poverty.

Luckily, Free The Children is here to help – and you guys have all shown you are right behind them. You donated $6,715 to Free The Children over the weekend, and it will go a long way towards building a schoolhouse in a place which we'll let you decide.

Before we get to that, though – more than ever, we can't thank you enough for your support during the marathon! Especially with our poor marathon scheduling which resulted in us being slightly overshadowed by Awesome Games Done Quick, you guys stuck with us and made the marathon a success. Seriously, you're awesome!

A huge thanks to Twitch.tv, Mashable, and all the other sites that helped us with exposure during the marathon.

72 hours

It certainly was an interesting 72 hours. The apocalypse almost happened early when tech issues plagued the beginning of the Apocalyptathon. We were hopelessly dropping frames for a while, and then our trusty viewers worked out a way to break the polls before we eventually got things smoothed out. Toby's "moderately hasteful" Majora's Mask run demonstrated why you shouldn't try to glitch through the first half of a game and then complete the second half legitimately.

George's creation of the GameToAid rap and the new money polls feature stimuated the high point of the marathon – over $1,000 of donations within an hour. We went through a hat craze, finally made Tim pay, received a bunch of awesome fan art, and raffled off a brand-new Nintendo Wii U. Congratulations to the winner, Ben Baker!

Where should we build that schoolhouse?

But enough reminiscing – let's get back down to business. Despite not reaching our initial $8,500 goal to completely fund a schoolhouse project, the money we raised will still go a long way towards one! Since you guys are the ones who donated, we're going to let you vote on where you'd like to send the funds. Below is some information about the countries in which Free The Children work:

Kenya

• The average literacy rate in Kenya is 85.1%.
• 26% of children ages 5 to 14 are involved in child labor.
• 50% of the population lives below the poverty line with an average annual income of $1,700.

India

• 34% of India’s population lives on less than $1 a day.
• Only 50% of secondary school-aged girls and 63% of boys in India are enrolled in secondary school.
• Children under 14 constitute around 3.6% of the total labor force in India.

Sierra Leone

• 70% of Sierra Leone’s population lives below the poverty line.
• Less than half of Sierra Leonean women aged 15 to 24 can read and write.
• 48% of Sierra Leone’s children aged 5 to 14 are involved in child labor.

Haiti

• Half of Haiti’s residents live on less than $1 US a day.
• Following the 2010 earthquake, 3 million people were affected as buildings, homes and hospitals collapsed.
• The average literacy rate among the population is 52.9%.

Ecuador

• Almost 40% of Ecuadorians live below the poverty line.
• There are approximately 400,000 child laborers in Ecuador.
• 67% of Ecuadorian children finish elementary school.

Rural China

• About 150 million people in China live on less than $1 a day.
• China is home to 18% of the world’s poor.
• 17.7% of students schooled in rural China are able to attend a university.

Nicaragua

• 50,000 children of primary school level do not attend school.
• The average number of years Nicaraguan children spend in school is just 4.6.
• Three-quarters of the Nicaraguan population live on less than $2 a day.

Ghana

• 53% of the population lives on less than $2 a day.
• Ghana’s national literacy rate is only 67%.
• 37% of children in Ghana are engaged in child labour.

Vote in the poll below! There are no right or wrong answers – every option is a good choice. Feel free to discuss your decision in the comments.

We've been working hard to make the upcoming Apocalyptathon our best marathon yet. As part of this, we've set up a heap of new tech to increase interactivity and engagement. Let's take a look at what's new.

Donation Referrals

It's understandable that not everyone is able to donate. But that doesn't mean you have to be excluded from all the fun of raising money for charity and winning prizes!

With the new donation referrals system, simply submit your name and email address, and we'll give you a unique donation link. Share this link with your friends on Facebook or Twitter and get them to donate! For every $10 that your friends donate, you get one entry into the raffle. There are also prizes — as well as exposure — for the top referrers. Everyone's a winner! Get your referral link now.

Raffles

Raffles are now drawn automatically, live on-stream every 12 hours. This means that raffles will always happen efficiently and on-time, and you get to watch as the list of potential winners is randomly iterated. Entries ($5 donations / $10 referred donations) are valid for all raffles, so donate early to increase your chances of winning! Check out the prizes up for grabs.

Chance Time Improvements

Perhaps the most exciting tech improvement of all is this: Chance Time is now in 3D. That's right, folks — experience your favourite random-challenge-generator in not one, not two, but three dimensions! The secret Chance Time algorithm has been refined to spit out more wacky, hilarious, and fun challenges than ever before. Who wants to give us a Chance Time before we even start?

Real-Time Voting

Polls have always been a much-loved feature by many GameToAid-ians. We've revamped polls so now you can see the results changing as people vote in real time! You can even go back and change your answer if you change your mind. Look ma, there's a poll open already!

Money Polls

Sometimes people get pretty passionate about things. A whopping 121 people voted in a poll entitled "Who should eat vegemite?" in our recent Zelda marathon.

We thought we'd leverage this — for a good cause, of course. Occasionally, we'll open a Money Poll. It's just like a normal poll, but instead of voting with free votes, you vote with dollars! Select the option you wish to vote for and then donate however many dollars you want to put towards it. Now that's good value!

Backend

We've completely rewritten the systems we use to administrate the GameToAid.org website and the HUD you see on the stream. This will make it considerably easier for us to manage everything, and improved reliability will help keep everything running smoothly.

Overall, we're quite excited to see all of this new tech in action, and you should be too! Look out for some other goodies when you tune in to the Apocalyptathon at 7:30 AM, 10 January 2013 GMT. See you all there!