Nothing But Nets

It’s the buzziest time of the summer for boy scouts as more than 40,000 scouts from across the nation gathered at Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia, for the Boy Scout National Jamboree. I had the honor of joining more than 5,000 scouts on an open field on a beautiful and sunny morning at the United Methodist Church’s Sunday service at the Jamboree. Nothing But Nets™ Champion Bishop Bickerton delivered the day’s message and talked about the important leadership role that scouts and Methodists can play to end one of the deadliest diseases in history. Bishop Bickerton then challenged the group to do what they could right then and there, and led the way with his own donation to the campaign. I was blown away by the response. The future leaders immediately stepped up to the plate as global citizens and humanitarians and collected more than $12,000 from the crowd for the purchase of 1,200 life-saving bed nets for families in Africa.

Scouts also committed to continue to spread the buzz about malaria by proudly wearing their commemorative Nothing But Nets patches with the United Methodist Church and by starting Nothing But Nets service projects in their home community. If other scouts are interested in starting a project and earning a service ribbon for the 100 Year Anniversary, make sure you check out our toolkit specifically for scouts. After all, it was through Lord Baden Powell’s experiences in Africa that inspired him to start the Scouting Movement. After 100 years of Scouting, we need to ensure his legacy carries on, and we can by helping the most vulnerable families in Africa prevent malaria.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending a supporter event in Springfield, VA. One of our long-time youth supporters, Elisabeth Clymer, hosted a swim-a-thon at her local pool in support of Nothing But Nets™. There were swimmers of all ages who had received pledges for the amount of laps they would swim. Elisabeth also reached out to our friends at Orkin for additional sponsorship, and a masseuse was on hand to help the spectators relax and enjoy the warm summer morning. 

Once the swimming started, the laps started adding up. All together, the team, known as the Cobias, swam a total of 6,783 laps!  That adds up to over 105 miles! Once all of the pledges were counted, the Cobias had raised enough to send nearly 400 life-saving bed nets! It was an incredible event to attend and I felt lucky to see so much support for ending malaria deaths in Africa. Elisabeth’s hard work is an inspiration and a great example of what young people can do in their own communities to have a global impact.

The UN has identified an urgent need to send life-saving bed nets to everyone who needs one in the Central African Republic (CAR) by the end of this year. We’re happy to announce that singer and actress Mandy Moore and PSI (Population Services International) are joining us and our UN partners to fill this need.

We have a special opportunity for you to learn more about this project, from Mandy herself! Join us on August 12 at 2pm ET for an exclusive chance to ask Mandy (and us) your questions during an interactive Facebook Townhall discussion. It’s easy – you’ll log in to Facebook, head to the Nothing But Nets page, and join the live conversation with Mandy and our malaria experts.

Scientists at the University of Arizona have made outstanding progress on stopping malaria in its tracks.  Led by scientist Michael Riehle, the scientists have had incredible success developing malaria-free mosquitoes.

How does one make a malaria-free mosquito? This works two ways: First, we know that malaria is caused by a parasite that the mosquito carries. The mosquito transfers this parasite to humans when she bites them.  So, the scientists were able to create mosquitoes that can no longer be infected with malaria and cannot transfer it to humans. Second, only mature mosquitoes can carry the malaria parasite. The scientists were able to create mosquitoes that do not live long enough to carry the disease.

Now they just have to spread these new and improved mosquitoes to the entire mosquito population. Easier said than done! Using only the modified mosquitoes can take up to 10 to 20 years, according to the article.  Despite this timeframe, "researchers are optimistic that genetic engineering of mosquitoes will be an important piece of the malaria-prevention puzzle."

Until then, let's keep spreading the buzz to send nets and save lives so we can reach the United Nations goal of ending malaria deaths by 2015. 
 

The connection between the newly crowned World Cup Champions of Spain and the continent of Africa goes beyond South Africa hosting this year’s tournament. As España’s soccer team was busy fighting to be the world’s best on the field, a group of former Spanish basketball legends and celebrities were busy playing in a game of their own where the proceeds would support Nothing But Nets™ in their global fight against malaria! The 2nd annual “Partido Contra La Malaria” celebrity basketball game took place at the La Plana sports hall in Barcelona where Team Vida (Life) played against Team Deporte (Sport).  
 
In addition to the renowned former men’s basketball players, other participants included Sergi Bruguera, former champion of Roland Garros; Mireia Belmonte, Olympian and European swimming Champion and Jordi "Chiqui" Sans, international and five-time water polo Olympian. The teams were also mixed with four Spanish women’s national team players, Lucila Pascua, Anna Cruz, Laura Camps and Silvia Dominguez. It was undeniably a very exciting and competitive game, with the final score, in the high 80s. But the points that were scored were insignificant compared to the satisfaction that all the participants felt in contributing to the fight against such a deadly disease.

A long time ago, my wife Maureen and I experimented with ways to raise money for Nothing But Nets™. In our commitment to battle malaria to the best of our abilities, we tried many things:  at first, we simply went door-to-door dressed in our Sunday finery. When that failed we tried dressing as large mosquitoes and handed out homemade cookies. That produced mixed results, although the cookies were a hit. We still weren't happy with the level of awareness or money we were raising, so we put together a small music festival which was very successful and ballooned into Lilith Fair, but malaria got nary a penny. In quick succession we attempted a garage sale (some success), a pie-eating contest (more success), a dance (rip-roaring success) and a mime show (no success at all). 

We finally came up with a basketball game to raise awareness and money and it was a huge success, certainly more than the mime show. Having set fundraising goals early on, we found we had exceeded them before the game was even played.

I had the amazing opportunity to go work with 2010 AMERICAN IDOL runner ups Tim Urban, Katie Stevens, and Aaron Kelly a couple weeks ago before they started up their summer tour around the U.S.  I traveled to Auburn Hills, Michigan, to spend the day with the IDOL contestants and film a short public service announcement for the UN Foundation’s Nothing But Nets™.  AMERICAN IDOL will be showing this video at every one of their concerts this summer!  (See if they’re coming to a city near you: http://www.americanidol.com/tour)

Tim, Katie, and Aaron were so fun to be around and so wonderful to take part of their rehearsal day to shoot a video with us about malaria. By the end of the shoot, they were all wearing Nothing But Nets™ wristbands and talking about how they wanted to go to Africa to help make a difference. Thank you to AMERICAN IDOL for caring about the cause of malaria and helping Nothing But Nets™ engage thousands of concert-goers this summer to donate $10 to send a net and save a life. Check out the video below:

Co-authored by Dave Burton

Part 1: Sunday, July 11
On Friday night, United Against Malaria hosted a reception for all of the partners to wrap up a great collaboration over the last year, ending with the World Cup final games this weekend. It was a great opportunity to meet the different partners, and hear about their involvement. A true highlight was listening to the stories of Kingsley Holgate's expeditions up and down the rivers of Africa distributing bed nets.

From there we headed down to the concert. This was a truly proud night for malaria. Our malaria PSAs had the full attention of 12,000 people, who also heard personal stories from two soccer players and a passionate and beautiful presentation from South African singer Yvonne Chaka Chaka. It was great to see the United Against Malaria logo up on the screens throughout the concert - a fantastic tribute to how far this partnership has come. We also heard from singer Andrea Bocelli and a children's choir.