Nothing But Nets

Congratulations to Ms. Otero’s 5th grade class at Andrew Jackson Language Academy for taking first place in the Chicago Elementary School Netraiser Challenge!

Ms. Otero’s 5th grade students and teamed up with their parents, neighbors and local area businesses to help their peers in Africa. In just three short months, the 33 students raised more than $3,000!

Our very own Katherine Commale was recently named United Methodist of the Year!  Rich Peck, former editor of the Daily Christian Advocate, and Reverend Kathy James, a congregational specialist in the South Carolina Conference, nominated Katherine for the title.  Amongst the other nominees Katherine stood out as a “shining example of youthful energy and commitment to making a difference as a United Methodist.”  

Her entire city of Philadelphia is recognizing her efforts as well! The Philadelphia Inquirer featured Katherine as a finalist for “Citizen of the Year”!  As always, the Nothing But Nets team is very proud of Katherine, who has been raising funds and spreading the buzz about the importance of bed nets for the past three years.

 

As part of the Chicago Elementary School Netraiser Challenge, Ms. Otero’s 5th grade class at Andrew Jackson Elementary School has been working hard to raise funds for bed nets!  Lt. Governor Pat Quinn and Nothing But Nets launched the Chicago Elementary School Challenge this fall, encouraging elementary school classrooms in the Chicagoland area to make a difference in preventing malaria and saving lives. 

Read more to hear from two of Ms. Otero’s students about their experiences with the Challenge...  

Nothing But Nets' second stop of the Philadelphia City Tour last week was at the University of Pennsylvania to host a malaria workshop.  Dr. Akhil Vaidya, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Drexel University College of Medicine; and Dr. David Roos, Professor of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania, joined us as expert speakers for the event.  Markley Foreman and Rodrigo Barcenas, two University of Pennsylvania seniors and Nothing But Nets supporters, also participated on the panel.

Deputy Director Adrianna Logalbo opened the workshop with an introduction of the speakers and by noting the importance of malaria prevention.  Dr. Vaidya then took the floor with a detailed presentation about the global malaria burden and disease agents.  Next, Dr. Roos discussed integrated malaria control strategies, including drugs, vaccines, insecticides, bed nets and other measures.  

Combining their experiences in entertainment, fashion and professional sports, three friends, Ben Tenzer, Michael Tellem, and Whitney Port (from MTV’s reality show "The Hills") recently teamed up to save lives from malaria.  A week ago, they held a fundraiser for Nothing But Nets in New York City!

The birthday party/fundraiser was hosted at Il Bastardo, an Italian Steakhouse & Wine Bar in the heart of Chelsea. In order to attend the event, Ben, Mike, and Whitney asked friends to make a $50 donation to Nothing But Nets. 

This week, Nothing But Nets and the Illinois Lt. Governor, Pat Quinn, launched the Chicago Elementary School Challenge!  Students from across the Chicagoland area will be teaming up with their classmates to raise funds and awareness for malaria prevention.  With the help of their teachers, students will create classroom Netraiser Teams. 

The team with the most funds for malaria raised after December 19th will win a laptop for each student and the teacher, a pizza party, and an assembly for their entire school with Nothing But Nets spokespeople, such as MLS and NBA stars!

 

I couldn’t believe my eyes last Monday when I was standing with the Nothing But Nets team in Harlem’s historical Holcombe Rucker Park, surrounded by celebrities, athletes, kids and a life-sized mosquito! 

The sun was shining and the music bumping as about 16 celebrity players lined up on the court to play in the inaugural Cavanagh Classic basketball game.  Tom Cavanagh, actor, producer and director, and his wife Maureen organized this fantastic event to raise funds and awareness for Nothing But Nets!  (Stay tuned for a special blog from the Cavanaghs about the game!)

Recently, Nothing But Nets and Orkin's Fight the Bite campaign made a roar at Zoo Atlanta!  Orkin and Nothing But Nets teamed up to spread the word about mosquitoes and malaria prevention during Sports Zoolebrity Day – a day which featured members from Atlanta's professional sports teams, including the Falcons, Dream and Georgia Tech's men's basketball team. 

Families attending Zoolebrity Day had the opportunity to meet and greet the athletes, and also learn about malaria!  Nothing But Nets and Orkin set up tables in the Orkin Children's Zoo to educate zoo visitors about mosquitoes, malaria, and how easy it is to send a net and save a life. 

For World Malaria Day, a group of UMC members thought they would show their support for Nothing But Nets by biking for 238 miles!  The group started the four-day bike ride in Montgomery, TX and concluded in Ft. Worth, TX.  View the map of their ride! Several churches along the route opened their doors to cyclists, providing them with food and a place to sleep.  The ride ended on April 23rd, marking the first day of General Conference, a gathering of United Methodists from all over the world.

The bikers originally set a fund-raising goal of $100,000.  After nearly 240 miles, hundreds of individuals contacted for donations, and untold man hours of effort, the Nothing But Sweat bike riders raised $156,144.00!  Check out the Nothing But Sweat blog if you’d like to see more pictures from the event, and congratulations to everyone!

The "Georgetown Hoyas: Operation Bug Off!" Netraiser Team's events around campus and Georgetown are in full swing now!  Let your inner Jordan shine at their 3 on 3 Basketball Tournament on Saturday, April 19th at noon.  The tournament, with registration fees going towards purchasing long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets to help prevent malaria, will take place at Yates Field House.  The first 75 people to register get free Nothing But Nets T-shirts and winners will be rewarded with gift certificates to Saxby's, the Tombs, and Dixie Liquors.  To find out more and to register, pick up a form at the front desk of Yates or register online at:
http://nbngeorgetown.googlepages.com/nbn. 

On Monday, April 14th, Georgetown students would like to invite members of the DC community to join together, raise their glasses high, and toast to the health of those in Africa!  The "Georgetown Hoyas: Operation Bug Off!" Netraiser Team will be hosting a bar night fund-raiser for those who are 21+ at Rhino Bar & Pumphouse from 8:00PM - 11:00PM.  Proceeds will be used to fund the purchase of bed nets!

The bar night is one of many events planned that lead up to World Malaria Day and the symposium held at Georgetown's Gaston Hall.  Past events include a 5K race, Trivia Night, and Domino's Dough Raising Night which have brought in several hundred dollars!  In addition to raising money to send nets and save lives, the Georgetown team hopes to get their fellow students, the faculty, and the community involved in the prevention of a disease that affects hundreds of millions of people each year.  We hope you can join us for the bar night.  Cheers! 

Woody Lynch, President of Reverend Marvin’s Gourmet BBQ Sauce, raised money for nets at a recent BBQ competition in Myrtle Beach, SC. Reverend Marvin’s has pledged to donate $1 per bottle sold to Nothing But Nets! In the course of several hours at the BBQ competition, Lynch sold 200 bottles of sauce.

“We want to emphasize that this is just the beginning of our efforts with Nothing But Nets,” Lynch stated, “from now on, for every bottle of Reverend Marvin’s Gourmet BBQ Sauce that is sold through our web site, we will donate $1 to this great cause. The prospect of knowing when we ship out an order of our sauce that we just helped save the life of a child is overwhelming. We’re honored to be a small part of Nothing But Nets.” For more information on Reverend Marvin's, click here.

When it was time for Naomi Kodama to tell her parents what gift she was hoping to receive for her tenth birthday, she told them that she didn't want any gifts at all.  Instead, she hoped to use her birthday to help others.  Naomi wanted to have a birthday party where guests could make donations for life-saving bed nets.  “There are people who barely have anything and we need to help them,” she wrote in the party invitation.

JCI Secretary-General Kodama was proud of his daughter's generous gesture, and shared the invitation to Naomi's bed net birthday party with his staff.  Despite the difficult weather during the night of the party, guests all had a great time at the Adrenaline Zone and Demolition Ball celebrating Naomi's birthday and preventing malaria! 
 

Junior Chamber International and Nothing But Nets are teaming up to save lives from malaria! In effort to advance the UN Millenium Development Goals, JCI has partnered with the United Nations Foundation and Nothing But Nets to provide long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets to children in Africa.

Just last week, JCI Secretary-General Edson A. Kodama and President Graham Hanlon visited the UN Foundation office in Washington, D.C. to meet with UN Foundation President Timothy E. Wirth and Nothing But Nets Executive Director Elizabeth Gore. During their visit, JCI pledged to raise funds for 1,000,000 long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets by 2015!

Click here to learn more about JCI's commitment to sending nets and saving lives!  

During the fall 2007 semester, the Honors Program freshman class at Central Michigan University raised nearly $6,000 and counting for malaria prevention in Africa! The philanthropy project was organized by Honors Program Associate Director Judy Idema and graduate student Laura Bantle, instructors of the Introduction to Honors course (HON 100). The Honors freshman class was divided up into a total of 30 small groups. Each group was given a fundraising goal of $200 and had to come up with and execute a quality fund raising project over the course of eight weeks. Almost all groups met the $200 goal and many exceeded the goal. 

My name is Meaghan McCarthy and I am six years old. Last month my daddy asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I told him a specific type of doll. He looked it up on the internet and told me the doll would be a very expensive gift. My daddy told me he would have to think about it for a little while.

Later that night he called me to the computer to show me the Nothing But Nets web site and to explain what the Campaign was doing to prevent malaria save lives. He explained to me that many children wouldn't live to see Christmas without the gift of mosquito nets.

My name is Elias and I am nine years old. I have been raising money for Nothing But Nets for about a year. I first read about the Campaign in TIME Magazine with my Mom. I started raising money by writing letters to everyone in my family, asking them to donate. I was hoping to get $100, and I ended up getting about $350 from family and friends! I decided I didn't want to stop there and I asked everyone at school to put their change from lunch in a jar for Nothing But Nets. Then I had a bake sale at my church and got about $250 more dollars.

Malaria funding has increased some 300% in the last three years. Between donor funding (~$1 billion), spending by endemic countries and their citizens (~$600 million), and R&D ($400 million), total spending amounts to just under $2 billion a year.

So how much do we need to meet the challenge of malaria?

A recent World Health Organization (WHO) study concluded that it would cost $1.7 billion to $2.2 billion per year over ten years to meet the 80% coverage targets in Africa. Worldwide the figure is $3.8 billion to $4.2 billion/year.

Yesterday at the Gates Malaria Forum, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) presented a somewhat different set of estimates: $7 billion per year worldwide.

Click here to vist The ONE Campaign and read the rest of this blog, posted by Martin Edlund from Malaria No More.

The Nothing But Nets team has been listening to all of your questions and we want to let you know that we have just posted some new FAQs to answer your most commonly asked questions, such as: “Can I purchase individual nets from Nothing But Nets?,” “Can I request a location to Nothing But Nets for a bed net distribution?,” “How can I get a copy of the Nothing But Nets video?”, etc. Thank you for your interest in the campaign and please check out the newly posted information!

Do you have an experience with malaria that you would like to share with other individuals working to prevent the disease? Have you hosted a Nothing But Nets event? Are you a proud parent, teacher, or friend who would like to highlight the fundraising efforts of local youth for Nothing But Nets? Write to us at stories@nothingbutnets.net and let us know! We are always hoping for supporters to share their stories and thoughts with us. We love to highlight them on the Web site and let people across the country know what great work Nothing But Nets supporters are doing to save lives!