There’s just 42 days left until Fanfest 2016, which means just 42 days for bearded challengers to eek out those extra millimetres for charity.

Three developers and two Eve Online players have been attempting to grow strong majestic beards since December 6 to prove who, of the five, is the manliest man.

CCP Cognac, CCP nLock and CCP Avalon have been locked in battle against each other and against Crossing Zebras editor-in-chief Niden and Chaos Theory’s Drechlas for almost 14 weeks.

Each of the five was required to trim their beards, some which taken years to grow, down to a pitiful 1cm.

So now, nearly 100 days later we’ve decided to check in on their progress.

CCP nLock

CCP Cognac

CCP Avalon

Drechlas

Niden

Based on these in progress images it looks like the favourite to take the inaugural Beards 4 Kids crown will be CCP Cognac, followed closely by Drechlas, Niden and CCP nLock. I have my concerns CCP Avalon has managed to show any growth in the past 14 weeks. The final decision will be made in Iceland on the first day of Fanfest.

This isn’t all been done for bragging rights though. This is all in aid of the Care 4 Kids charity.

Since the charity was launched by Pandemic Legion’s C4w3 in September last year, Care4Kids has grown to include around 300 kids in in hospitals in four different countries. It was even granted charitable registration by the Swedish Revenue Agency.

More than 560 PLEX has been donated to the charity and around 350 care packages have been donated to sick kids.

Each care package gifted to the children contains 1 PLEX, 1 set of +3 implants and 100m ISK.

Eve Bet and Chaos Theory have kindly agreed to sponsor Beards 4 Kids, each agreeing to donate 30mil ISK per mm of beard growth amongst the five contestants – but as always the Eve community have the ability to really make this a success.

To get personally involved all you need to do is pick the contestant you think will have the longest beard come Fanfest and send a minimum donation of 100m ISK to the corporation Beards For Kids. CCP will randomly draw three characters who donated money to the winner. They will each receive 2% of the total amount donated to Beards For Kids.

Any alliance or corporation can choose to step in and sponsor in the same fashion as Eve-Bet and Chaos Theory. If you would like to sign up your alliance please send a mail to beards4kids@CrossingZebras.com with your alliance info and the amount of ISK you wish to sponsor with per mm. Sponsors will be announced through the coverage here on CZ and at Fanfest.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to send a mail to beards4kids@CrossingZebras.com or an EVE mail to Master of Beards (CEO of the Beards For Kids corporation).