Hi! My name is Abril Diaz, I'm an Artist and Gamer!
As a Coordinator of Drummers Without Borders, I do Music, Puppetry, Visual Arts, Crafts and more. Since 2005 I've been teaching classes, workshops, summer camps, doing assemblies and performances.
I work with organizations like Arts Education Connection San Diego, Space 4 Art, San Diego Guild of Puppetry, Center for World Music, Fern Street Circus, EdMusica and more.
I bring art to people of all ages and all walks of life and teach at Elementary, Middle, and High School grade level in several School Districts and at places like Libraries, Recreational Centers, Museums, Juvenile Court, and Youth Detention Centers.
I love bringing joy to people through the arts and help them build important skills that will last for a lifetime and channel their energy into something positibe, and will continue to do for as long as I can.
Last Week, the night of May 26th while crossing the border back from Tijuana I had an incident with my car. Luckily it was a very low speed accident (10-15mph), and my health is intact, but my car was badly affected.
I towed the least miles I could to avoid extra chargers, and parked it near a mechanic shop in hopes of getting it fixed asap as It's my daily use vehicle, for work, commuting, and visiting my daughter.
Between emergency late night towing and needed repairs, estimated expenses come out to around $2000-$2500 which is an amount that I'm struggling to cover and I'm already working multiple jobs and gigs.
On another very important note, I'm also a semi-professional gamer known as El Rosa, and this year I've been playing competitively again.
The game I play, KOFXV, has a circuit of tournaments around the world called SWC2026 (SNK World Championship 2026), where the top 8-10 players of each tournament earn points, and the top 20 players with the most points will qualify to a Grand Finals Tournament with a prize pot of $1,000,000 USD.
The circuit is already halfway through. I've invested so much since the year started and with great results. With a combined effort of my own pocket, community and family support, and a very close friend who's helped me immensely, at times with registration costs, rooming, or with 80% of the cost of a new gaming laptop to train and livestream, I am currently on 16th Place on the Global Ranking List as of today! I recently placed 5th out of 139 in Chicago and 9th out of 277 in Tokyo, Japan.
My goal is to qualify for Grand Finals, then get the highest placing I can in Grand Finals as there's life changing money on the line!
In 2023 I qualified for Grand Finals with little preparation and ended up in 17th Place, so I know with proper preparation I can achieve much more.
Unfortunately my car wreck is holding me back because money that I had planned for bills, living expenses, responsibilities and tournament travel, has been going to my car and It's still not even safely drivable yet.
This fundraiser will help me in my pathway to victory in all aspects. My projected goal of $2500 would help me to get back on my feet, fix my car, keep working, keep doing art, and keep fighting to qualify for Grand Finals. Any remaining funds would go towards tournament competition to prepare myself as much as possible to WIN!
Thank you so much for taking the time to reading, please share with as many people as you can as every bit of support as insignificant as it might seem, is of huge help.
Much Love and stay safe
- Abril Diaz / El Rosa
*Fun facts:
There's a wiki of fighting games and I have my own page: